American actor Burt Lancaster was BOTD in 1913. Born in New York City to a working-class family, he became a gymnast, forming an acrobatic act with a friend and eventually joining the circus. An injury forced him into performing in burlesque shows and posing nude for physique magazines. After serving in the US Army in World War Two, he was persuaded to audition for a Broadway play, and was spotted by a Hollywood talent agent. His second film The Killers was a critical and commercial hit, launching him and his co-star Ava Gardner to instant stardom. With his striking good looks, athletic build and sense of coiled danger, he excelled at soulful bruisers and romantic leads, burning up the screen with Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity and playing Anna Magnani’s brawny object of desire in the film of Tennessee Williams‘ play The Rose Tattoo. After forming his own film production company, he produced the Oscar and Palme D’Or winning romantic drama Marty, followed by the satirical comedy Sweet Smell of Success, notable for his crackling on-screen sexual chemistry with Tony Curtis. He won an Oscar in 1960 for his role as a Bible-quoting confidence trickster in Elmer Gantry. Unlike many of his peers, he survived the decline of the Hollywood studio system, playing a withered patriarch in Luchino Visconti’s historical epic (Il Gattopardo) The Leopard, going commando as a suburban alcoholic in The Swimmer, based on John Cheever‘s short story, and worked with independent directors John Cassavetes, Robert Altman, Bernardo Bertolucci and Louis Malle. Married three times and with five children, he had affairs with men and women throughout his life. His bisexuality was explored, fascinatingly, in Visconti’s 1974 film Gruppo di famiglia in un interno (Conversation Piece), in which he played an elderly closeted aristocrat who becomes enamoured of a young man, played by Visconti’s real-life lover Helmut Berger. Lancaster’s biographer Kate Buford revealed that he was under investigation by the FBI for much of his career, due to his civil rights activism and his attendance at gay orgies with Rock Hudson. He died in 1994 aged 80.