Versatile actor Tony Curtis dead at 85

Tony Curtis, one of Hollywood's prettiest faces but also a versatile actor who starred in the acerbic drama "Sweet Smell of Success," the racially themed "The Defiant Ones" and the cross-dressing comedy "Some Like It Hot," died Wednesday evening at his home in the Las Vegas-area city of Henderson, Nev. He was 85.

The cause was cardiac arrest, Clark County Coroner Mike Murphy said Thursday.

"He died peacefully here, surrounded by those who love him and have been caring for him," his wife, Jill Curtis, told The Associated Press outside their home. "All Tony ever wanted to be was a movie star. He didn't want to be the most dramatic actor. He wanted to be a movie star, ever since he was a little kid."

He succeeded, becoming a screen idol alongside contemporaries like Marlon Brando, James Dean and Rock Hudson. It was the blue-eyed Curtis who epitomized the figure of the playboy movie star, hopping romantically from Marilyn Monroe to Janet Leigh (the first of six wives), with many a beauty in between. "I used showgirls like some guys use vitamin pills - two a day," he later boasted in his 1993 autobiography.

Curtis also inspired a pre-Beatles female hysteria. He was so often mobbed by fans that a studio costumer began dressing him in breakaway coats with rippable sleeves. In an episode of "The Flintstones" he was memorably caricatured as Stony Curtis, a finely chiseled actor who sends Wilma and Betty into a swoon. (Curtis himself provided the voice.)

The well-coiffed, well-spoken Curtis began his life as Bernard Schwartz, born in 1925 to Hungarian-Jewish immigrant parents in the Bronx. As a child during the Great Depression, he shined shoes and spent time in an orphanage. During the prewar 1930s, he was chased and beaten by anti-Semitic youth gangs. Movie houses provided refuge; the future Tony Curtis often cited Cary Grant as his hero.

After joining the Navy at 17, Curtis attended acting school and landed a contract with Universal.

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His early roles were mostly unmemorable (his native Bronx yowl can be heard in some of them), butHe scored an unlikely breakthrough as the sniveling, bottom-feeding publicist Sidney Falco in 1957's "Sweet Smell of Success." The following year he and Sidney Poitier starred in "The Defiant Ones" as escaped convicts who overcome mutual loathing to survive. His role as racist John "Joker" Jackson earned Curtis his only Oscar nomination, for best actor.

"In those days black actors didn't get their name above the title," Curtis told an audience at Huntington's Cinema Arts Centre last November. "I told them, if Sidney doesn't get equal billing with me, I'm not doing the picture."

Curtis remains best known for "Some Like It Hot," the 1959 Billy Wilder comedy in which he and Jack Lemmon play musicians who go into hiding by dressing as women; Marilyn Monroe plays the bombshell who befriends them. In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked it the 22nd greatest movie of all time.

In the 1960s, Curtis' star began to fade. Sex comedies such as 1965's "Boeing, Boeing" (with Jerry Lewis) traded on his swinging reputation but also date-stamped him. He won good reviews for his shocking turn as a serial killer in 1968's "The Boston Strangler," but offers nevertheless began dwindling. Drug and alcohol addiction followed.

After a stint at the Betty Ford Center in the 1980s, Curtis took occasional film roles and television cameos and also pursued painting. In recent weeks he had been hospitalized several times for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung problems, which his wife blamed on smoking 30 years ago. The actor died in his sleep, she said.

"My father leaves behind a legacy of great performances in movies and in his paintings and assemblages," Jamie Lee Curtis, his daughter with Janet Leigh, said in a statement Thursday. "He leaves behind children and their families who loved him and respected him. . . . He also leaves behind fans all over the world." With AP