Anthony Quinn was born in Mexico in 1915 to an Irish-Mexican family and moved to Los Angeles as a child. He had various careers as a boxer, architect's assistant, and preacher before becoming an actor, getting his first starring role in 1936. Throughout his over four decade career he appeared in over 100 films, easily moving between starring and supporting roles in a vast array of ethnicities. He reached his career zenith in 1964's Zorba the Greek, which earned him his fourth Oscar nomination. Quinn had many children with his three wives and two other partners over his lifetime before passing away in 2001 at age 86 from cancer complications.

2. Anthony Quinn was born Antonio
Rudolfo Oaxaca Quinn on April 21,
1915, in Chihuahua, Mexico, to
Manuela (Oaxaca) and Francisco
Quinn, who became an assistant
cameraman at an LA film studio. His
paternal grandfather was Irish, and the
rest of his family was Mexican. His family
moved to Los Angeles, California, where
he grew up.

4. Young Anthony had a number of
experiences that influenced his later
career as an actor. At different times, he
was a professional boxer, studied
architecture under Frank Lloyd Wright
and was an assistant preacher to the
famous evangelist, Aimee Simple
McPherson.
It was Frank Lloyd Wright who
encouraged Quinn to pursue an acting
career. After a short time doing stage
performances and serving as a film extra,
Quinn’s first starring role was in the 1936
film, Parole.

6. Throughout his artistic career
developed over four decades and a
half, Anthony Quinn caused a lot of
considerations that tried to catch in a
few words the uniqueness of his
personality as a man and actor. "It is a
presence that fills the house” declared
those who knew him.

8. Quinn appeared in more than a hundred
feature films in his film career, including
Lawrence of Arabia, Requiem for a
Heavyweight, and, more recently, A Walk
in the Clouds with Keanu Reeves in 1995.
"I can't retire," he told ABC's Bill Diehl "I
mean, I started working when I was a
year and a half old, and I worked all my
life.”

10. He was one of the few actors to move
easily and successfully between starring
and supporting roles throughout his
career. Quinn played a vast array of
characters and ethnicities, including
American, Arab, Basque, Chinese,
English, French, Greek, Hawaiian,
Hebrew, Hun, Irish, Italian, Mexican,
Mongol, Native American, Filipino,
Portuguese, Spaniard and Ukrainian.
"One of the reasons I did all the Greeks
and Arab parts I did was because I was
trying to identify myself as a man of the
world," he told The Times.

13. Quinn reached the zenith of his career, playing Zorba the Greek in the 1964 film of the
same name(1964), which brought him his fourth, and last, Oscar nomination as Best
Actor.

15. He died on the 3rd of June 2001, in Boston,
Massachusetts, from pneumonia and
respiratory failure linked to his battle with
throat cancer. He was 86 years old..

17. His first wife was , the actress Katherine
DeMille, who wed in 1937. The couple had
five children:
Christopher (1939-1941),
Christina (born December 1, 1941),
Catalina (born November 21, 1942),
Duncan (born August 4, 1945), and
Valentina (born December 26, 1952).
In 1965, Quinn and DeMille were divorced,
because of his affair with Italian costume
designer Jolanda Addolori, whom he
married in 1966.

18. They had three children:
Francesco Quinn (March 22, 1963 – August 5, 2011),
Danny (born April 16, 1964), and
Lorenzo Quinn (born May 7, 1966) .
The union ended in 1997, after Quinn had children with
his secretary, Katherine Benvin.

19. He then married Benvin, with whom he had two children,
Antonia Patricia Rose Quinn (born July 23, 1993) and Ryan
Nicholas Quinn (born July 5, 1996).
Quinn and Benvin remained married until his death.

20. Quinn had also two children with Friedel Dunbar:
Sean Quinn (born February 7, 1973) and Alex A.
Quinn (born December 30, 1976)

21. Anthony Quinn appeared in more movies with other Oscar-winning actors than any
other Oscar-winning actor - a total of 46 Oscar-winning co-stars .

22. Anthony Quinn is the actor who will
forever remain in the history of the cinema
and the public's memory as a symbol of
vitality with the indestructible inner
power and joy of life.

23. Source images and text : internet
PPS Mana
Sound: Sirtaki - Mikis Theodorakis