He began his career as a contract player for Columbia Pictures before achieving stardom through his roles in The Marrying Kind, Pat and Mike (which earned him a Golden Globe nomination), Let's Do It Again, and Battle Cry.

His athletic build and gruff, raspy voice saw him frequently typecast in "tough guy" roles throughout his career, which lasted well into the late 1980s.

[1] Ray was born Aldo Da Re in Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania, to an Italian family with five brothers (Mario, Guido, Dante, Dino, and Louis) and one sister (Regina).

His brother Mario Da Re (1933–2010) lettered in football at USC from 1952 to 1954 and appeared as a contestant on the May 12, 1955, edition of Groucho Marx's NBC-TV quiz show You Bet Your Life.

[3] At age 18, during World War II in 1944, Ray entered the United States Navy, serving as a frogman until 1946; he saw action at Okinawa with UDT-17.

[4]) He left college in order to run for the office of constable of the Crockett Judicial District in Contra Costa County, California.

[5] In April 1950 Columbia Pictures sent a unit to San Francisco to look for some athletes to appear in a film they were making called Saturday's Hero (1951).

After several months, Ray found "the quiet life... monotonous",[6] so he contacted Max Arnow, talent director at Columbia, and expressed interest in appearing in more movies.

Four weeks later, Arnow called back, saying Columbia wanted to audition Ray for a small part in Judy Holliday's new movie The Marrying Kind.

Sight & Sound later commented: To give the performance he did in The Marrying Kind after so little previous experience was clear evidence that in Aldo Ray the screen had discovered one of its rare "naturals".

This was no carefully edited, tricked out performance, but a strikingly sincere and imaginative interpretation: an exceptional talent responding to a finely intuitive director...

[11]Cukor then cast Ray in a supporting role in Pat and Mike, starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.

Ray's work in Pat and Mike led to his nomination, along with Richard Burton and Robert Wagner, for a Golden Globe as Best Newcomer.

"[7] Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn liked Ray and wanted him for the role of Private Robert Prewitt in From Here to Eternity (1953), but Fred Zinnemann insisted Montgomery Clift be cast.

"[15] Ray was meant to appear in My Sister Eileen (1955) as The Wreck, but he walked off the set, claiming his role was too small, and had to be replaced by Dick York.

[16] Battle Cry was a big hit at the box office, so Columbia gave Ray a lead role as a sergeant who marries a Japanese girl in Three Stripes in the Sun (originally The Gentle Wolfhound) (1955) and then loaned him to Paramount for We're No Angels (also 1955), in which he starred with Humphrey Bogart, Peter Ustinov, Basil Rathbone, Leo G. Carroll, and Joan Bennett.

The good humour, the lenitive smile, the frog in the throat voice betray nothing of the disappointment the actor must feel after such exciting beginnings under Cukor's guidance.

However, the situation was resolved when he agreed to make Nightfall (1957), playing an artist who encounters a pair of ruthless bank robbers.

[19] In 1956, in between appearances in Three Stripes In The Sun and Men in War, Ray worked in radio as a personality and announcer at hit music station WNDR in Syracuse, New York.

"[23] He starred in 1959 in Four Desperate Men (The Siege of Pinchgut), filmed in Australia; it was the last movie produced by Ealing Studios (releasing through MGM) and a box office disappointment.

[25] Ray made The Day They Robbed the Bank of England, directed by John Guillermin, in the UK and Johnny Nobody in Ireland.

He formed his own company, Crockett Productions, and bought two original scripts for films that were not made: Soldares, by Edwin Gottlieb, about the search for Pancho Villa,[28] and Frogman, South Pacific, by William Zeck.

"[4] His career decline accelerated in the 1980s, and after being diagnosed with throat cancer in 1989, he accepted virtually any role that came his way to maintain his costly health insurance.

He provided voice-over work as Sullivan for the 1982 animated film The Secret of NIMH alongside fellow character actor John Carradine.

[30] He appeared in two more higher-profile films, Michael Cimino's The Sicilian (1987) and Blood Red (1989), both in supporting roles that emphasized his Italian heritage.

[32] Brad Pitt's character in Tarantino's 2009 war film Inglourious Basterds is a soldier named "Aldo Raine", in tribute to Ray.

Aldo Ray has never been considered a great Hollywood actor in the traditional sense but his natural, unaffected performances often seemed to emerge from some unsettled place.

Whenever Ray erupted on screen it felt like you were watching a volcano explode and if you didn't get out of the way it could easily swallow you up in a heavy flow of golden molten lava.

Film historians often like to talk about the sea change that occurred in the 1950s, when actor's [sic] like Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando brought a new kind of sincerity to Hollywood.

These highly trained method actors changed the way we appreciate and understand acting today and they've rightfully been recognized for their accomplishments.