Yul Brynner Movies and Career Information

Yul Brynner (Russian: Юлий Борисович Бринер, Julij Borisovič Briner; July 11, 1920 – October 10, 1985) was a Russian-born actor of stage and film. He was best known for his portrayal of Mongkut, king of Siam, in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor for the film version; he also played the role over 4,500 times on stage. He is also remembered as Rameses II in the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille film The Ten Commandments, General Bounine in Anastasia and Chris Adams in The Magnificent Seven. Brynner was noted for his deep, rich voice and for his shaven head, which he maintained as a personal trademark after adopting it for his role in The King and I. He was also a photographer and the author of two books. Yul Brynner was born Yuliy Borisovich Bryner in 1920. He exaggerated his background and early life for the press, claiming that he was born Taidje Khan of part-Mongol-Tatar parentage, on the Russian island of Sakhalin. In reality, he was born at home in a four-story residence at #15 Aleutskaya Street, Vladivostok, in the Russian Far East (present-day Primorsky Krai, Russia). He also infrequently referred to himself as Julius