Yul Brynner Net Worth

Yul Brynner's Quotes

• People don't know my real self, and they're not about to find out.
• [to interviewers] Just call me a nice, clean-cut Mongolian boy.
• Girls have an unfair advantage over boys: If they can't get what they want by being smart, they can get it by being dumb.
• [recorded in January 1985, after he was diagnosed with lung cancer] Now that I'm gone, I tell you: Don't smoke, whatever you do, just don't smoke. If I could take back that smoking, we wouldn't be talking about any cancer. I'm convinced of that.
• I'm not of the can-kicking, shovel-carrying, ear-scratching, torn T-shirt school of acting. There are very few real men in the movies these days. Yet being a real man is the most important quality an actor can offer on the screen.

Interesting Facts about Yul Brynner

1. In 1950, before he achieved fame, he was the director of a children's puppet show on CBS, Life with Snarky Parker (1950), which lasted barely eight months on the air before cancellation.
2. Had one son with his first wife, Virginia Gilmore: Yul "Rock" Brynner II (born December 23, 1946).
3. Daughter Lark Brynner (born 1958) was born out of wedlock. She was raised by her mother, German actress Frances Martin.
4. Had one daughter with his second wife, Doris Kleiner: Victoria Brynner (born November 1962 in Switzerland).
5. Had two daughters with his third wife, Jacqueline de Croisset: Mia Brynner (adopted 1974, born in Vietnam) and Melody Brynner (adopted 1974, born in Vietnam).
6. Despite numerous resources stating that he was interred at the non-existent "Saint Robert Churchyard at the Monastery of Saint Michael", he actually was buried in the Orthodox cemetery Saint-Michel-du-Bois-Aubry of Luzé, a village 55km from Tours in Touraine, France.
7. His paternal grandfather, Julius Bryner, was of Swiss-German origin (Julius was the son of Johannes Bruner and Marie Huber Von Windisch). His paternal grandmother, Natalya Iosifovna Kurkutova, was Russian, from Irkutsk, and was said to be of part Mongolian/Buryat ancestry. His maternal grandparents, Dmitriy Evgrafovich Blagovidov and Anna Timofeevna Kireeva, were also Russian, from Penza.
8. Is a recipient of the presitigious Connor Award, given by the brothers of the Phi Alpha Tau fraternity based out of Emerson College in Boston.
9. He died on the same day as his Bitka na Neretvi (1969) co-star Orson Welles: October 10, 1985.
10. While touring in the play "Odyssey" in the mid-1970s, he attained a reputation for being a holy terror toward hotel staff members. Among other things, all hotel suites where he would stay had to be painted a certain shade of tan and all kitchens in those hotel suites had to be stocked in advance with "one dozen brown eggs, under no circumstances white ones!" (this should be noted, in fairness, that Brynner personally paid the expense of these requests). The play itself, later retitled "Home, Sweet Homer", had a successful pre-Broadway tour of over a year, but lasted exactly one performance when it opened on Broadway in 1976.
11. He was an accomplished photographer. He took many photos on the sets of the various projects he worked on over the years.
12. Mentioned in the popular mid-1980s song "One Night in Bangkok", sung by Murray Head, from the soundtrack of the musical "Chess".
13. When he found out he would be playing Pharaoh Rameses II opposite Charlton Heston's Moses in The Ten Commandments (1956) and that he would be shirtless for most of the film, he began a rigorous weightlifting program because he did not want to be physically overshadowed by Heston (which explains his buffer than normal physique during The King and I (1956), another film he was set to work on at the time).
14. A recording of him explaining how being bald helped him is included in a song by Stephen Malkmus (of Pavement) titled "Jo Jo's Jacket". The first verses are about Brynner and include a reference to Westworld (1973) and The King and I (1956).
15. Won Broadway's 1952 Tony Award as Best Supporting or Featured Actor (Musical) for "The King and I", a role he recreated in his Oscar-winning performance in the film of the same name, The King and I (1956). He also won a second, Special Tony Award in 1985 "honoring his 4,525 performances in 'The King and I'".
16. He was the only actor to appear in both The Magnificent Seven (1960) and its first sequel, Return of the Seven (1966). However, he did not appear in either of the other sequels, Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969) and The Magnificent Seven Ride! (1972).
17. Had appeared in three different films with Eli Wallach: The Magnificent Seven (1960), Danger Grows Wild (1966) and Romansa konjokradice (1971).
18. Apprentice of Michael Chekhov.
19. Married Doris Kleiner on the set during shooting of The Magnificent Seven (1960).
20. Is one of only nine actors to have won both a Tony and an Oscar for having portrayed the same roles on stage and screen. The others are Joel Grey (Cabaret (1972)), Shirley Booth (Come Back, Little Sheba (1952)), Rex Harrison (My Fair Lady (1964)), Anne Bancroft (The Miracle Worker (1962)), Paul Scofield (A Man for All Seasons (1966)), José Ferrer (Cyrano de Bergerac (1950)), Jack Albertson (The Subject Was Roses (1968)) and Viola Davis (Fences (2016)).