He was known for his portrayal of earthy, passionate characters "marked by a brutal and elemental virility"[1] in over 100 film, television and stage roles between 1936 and 2002.

Quinn was born in Chihuahua City, Mexico, and was raised in El Paso, Texas and East Los Angeles.

[8] Frank reportedly rode with Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, then later moved to the East Los Angeles neighborhood of City Terrace and became an assistant cameraman at a movie studio.

"I have known most of the great actresses of my time, and not one of them could touch her," Quinn once said of the spellbinding McPherson, whom he credited with inspiring Zorba's gesture of the dramatically outstretched hand.

[12] As a young man, Quinn boxed professionally to earn money, then studied art and architecture under Frank Lloyd Wright at the designer's Arizona residence and his Wisconsin studio, Taliesin.

[14] A breakthrough in his career occurred in 1941, when he received an offer to play a matador in the bullfighting-themed Blood and Sand with Tyrone Power and Rita Hayworth.

By 1947, Quinn had appeared in more than 50 films and had played a variety of characters, including Indians, Mafia dons, Hawaiian chiefs, Filipino freedom fighters, Chinese guerrillas, and Arab sheiks.

In the late 1950s, Quinn traveled to Rome, where he collaborated with several renowned Italian filmmakers and established himself as a star of world cinema.

In 1953, he turned in one of his best performances as a dim-witted, thuggish, and volatile strongman in Federico Fellini's Oscar-winning La Strada (1954), opposite Giulietta Masina.

In fact, Quinn left the production for a film, never having played Becket, and director Peter Glenville suggested a road tour with Olivier as Henry.

He played a Greek resistance fighter in The Guns of Navarone (1961), an aging boxer in Requiem for a Heavyweight, and the Bedouin shaikh Auda abu Tayi in Lawrence of Arabia (both 1962).

[18] In 1970 Quinn starred as a liberal sociology professor in the campus unrest drama R. P. M., opposite Ann-Margret, and as a Smoky Mountains backwoodsman in A Walk in the Spring Rain, Ingrid Bergman's first American film in 20 years.

He played NYPD Captain Frank Martelli, who along with Kotto, was investigating a robbery-homicide of Italian and Black gangsters in Harlem, New York City.

Quinn played real-life Bedouin leader Omar Mukhtar, who fought Benito Mussolini's Italian troops in the deserts of Libya.

Quinn's film career slowed during the 1990s, but he nonetheless continued to work steadily, appearing in Revenge (1990), Jungle Fever (1991), Only the Lonely (1991), Last Action Hero (1993), A Walk in the Clouds (1995) and Seven Servants (1996).

[21] In 1965, Quinn and DeMille divorced because of his affair with Italian costume designer Jolanda Addolori (died 2016), whom he married in 1966.

[23] He assisted in fundraising efforts for the legal defense of Mexican-American youth in the racially charged Sleepy Lagoon murder trial in 1942.

[24][better source needed] In 1969, Quinn visited with Native American student activists occupying Alcatraz Island in protest, promising to offer assistance.

[26] In 1971, he narrated a documentary film by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, discussing job discrimination faced by Hispanic Americans.

Throughout his teenaged years, he won various art competitions in California and focused his studies at Polytechnic High School in Los Angeles on drafting.

Later, Quinn studied briefly under Frank Lloyd Wright through the Taliesin Fellowship — an opportunity created by winning first prize in an architectural design contest.

[31] He wrote two memoirs, The Original Sin (1972) and One Man Tango (1997), a number of scripts, and a series of unpublished stories currently in the collection of his archive.

He died of respiratory failure (due to complications from radiation treatment for lung cancer) on June 3, 2001, in Boston, at age 86.

[32] His wife asked for the permission of Bristol authorities to bury him in his favorite spot in the backyard of his house, near an old maple tree.

[33] On January 5, 1982, the Belvedere County Public Library in East Los Angeles was renamed in honor of Anthony Quinn.

[38] Quinn bought the land during the filming of The Guns of Navarone in Rhodes, but it was reclaimed by the Greek government in 1984 due to a change in property law.