Charles Bronson Had A Tough Childhood & 'Never' Forgot 'Back-Breaking' Pain Of Mining Coal

May 31, 2022

American actor Charles Bronson is best remembered for his roles as gun-slingers, vigilantes, prizefighters, and most notably his portrayals of the hardened men of the American West. Audiences and directors alike cherished Bronson for his stony looks, furrowed brow, and air of quiet mystery. 

Sergio Leone, director of the outlaws-and-bandits classic "Once Upon a Time in the West," once said of Bronson's unmistakable appearance, "He is Destiny..a sort of granite block, impenetrable but marked for life...menacing, unsettling." This look was perfect for Leone's character of Harmonica, which Bronson famously played with his "face made of marble." Walter Hill, who directed Bronson in the 1975 film "Hard Times,” echoed this sentiment, saying, "There's great poetry in Charles' face." In reviewing the film, critic Roger Ebert said it was "a powerful, brutal film containing a definitive Charles Bronson performance." 

Though Bronson may have made it in Hollywood with "a name you couldn't remember with a face you couldn't forget," he always maintained that his childhood hardships not only formed him as an actor but also set the lines in his rugged face. Judging from the way he spoke, it seemed some part of Bronson never left his poverty-stricken upbringing.

Back before he was starring in revenge-fueled box office hits and commanding a million dollars per film, Bronson lived in squalid conditions, having been born in American coal country. There, he had worked in the mines, starting at a young age, and from his stories, a "shattered sadness personified [his] childhood."

Born as Charles Dennis Buchinsky, Bronson was raised "in Ehrenfeld, Pennsylvania, the son of a coal miner and the ninth of fifteen children." His large Lithuanian family lived "in a company-built town of about 80 houses, set at the foot of a soot-colored hill pitted with mine tunnels."

The Buchinsky's home was a "tiny cold-water shack that [Bronson's] family of 17 lived in." Though nestled in the Little Conemaugh River valley, this upbringing was far from idyllic. The Buchinsky's lived so close to the extraction site that "the coal car tracks that ran out of the mine's mouth passed just a few yards from the family home." 

When Bronson was only a teenager, the mine ceased to be merely a proximity and became instead his reality "when [his] father died and [Bronson] had to quit school to support [his] mother and sisters." Having to descend into the coal tunnels at that age left a profound impact on Bronson.

Later in life, he would tell an interviewer, "Very few people know what it's like...what it is like to live down there underneath the surface of the world, in that total blackness, living on your knees, breathing that dust, and to be unable to shake it off even when you do go home."

Bronson, whose face earned him a place on the silver screen, saw his visage as something shaped by this experience. He commented, "Some people say I still have coat dust etched into my face. Anyway, I've never gotten the smell of coal out of my nostrils and I've never forgotten the back-breaking work." 

In addition to taking a toll on his young body, the mines also affected Bronson mentally. He said, "During my years as a miner, I was just a kid but I was convinced that I was the lowliest of all forms of man."

Bronson often spoke candidly, darkly of the mines, even after breaking into Hollywood. He admitted openly, "Everybody down in the mines has an inferiority complex. It's the lowest point on the social scale, the direst, hardest work, and we all know it." 

Director Sergio Sollima, who worked with Bronson for the film "Violent City," said "[Bronson] was an actor who was tormented by his childhood...He didn't acknowledge it but it was exactly the quality that gave him a huge amount of strength." Sollima continued, perhaps envisioning the contrast of Bronson's striking face smeared with coal, saying,

"As a boy, he had been a miner- an ugly young man, truly- with this extraordinary face." The actor's body clearly reflected this journey, with "the first two decades of his life [having been] etched in his unforgettable face."

While Bronson may not have entirely healed from his childhood, it was that "tough, virile face that millions of fans [would come] to respect." 

Whether the lines in his iconic brow were shaped by hardship or genetics, there is an undeniable triumph in the fact that an ex-Pennsylvania coal miner "later earned 20,000 dollars a day" and was buried a rich man in a "hilltop grave, in Vermont" in 2003 at the age of 81. 

What is your favorite Charles Bronson film? Let us know — and be sure to pass this article on to friends, family, and fellow Once Upon a Time in the West fans!