Initially known for playing tough guys with a tender heart, he went on to achieve success with more complex and challenging roles over a 45-year career in films and television series.

In 1948 Lancaster starred alongside Barbara Stanwyck in the commercially and critically acclaimed film Sorry, Wrong Number, where he portrayed the husband to her bedridden invalid character.

Playing a bird expert prisoner in Birdman of Alcatraz in 1962, he earned the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor and his third Oscar nomination.

Although initially unenthusiastic about acting, Lancaster was encouraged to audition for a Broadway play by a producer who saw him in an elevator while he was visiting his then-girlfriend at work.

Directed by Robert Siodmak, it was a great commercial and critical success[11][12] and launched Lancaster and his co-star Ava Gardner to stardom.

[15] In 1948, Lancaster had a change of pace with the film adaptation of Arthur Miller's All My Sons, made at Universal Pictures with Edward G. Robinson.

MGM put him in a popular Western, Vengeance Valley in 1951,[17] then he went to Warners to play the title role in the biopic Jim Thorpe – All-American, also in 1951.

Taking the premise of The Flame and the Arrow a step further, it allowed the pair to, not only emphasise the absurdity of the story with more spectacle and comical situations but to demonstrate they were able to perform their own circus skills-based stunts without relying on stuntmen quite as much a most Hollywood stars.

The film, co-starring Tony Curtis and Gina Lollobrigida, went on to become the production company's top box office success, and United Artists expanded its deal with HHL.

Four starred Lancaster: Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), a Robert Wise directed war film with Clark Gable, which was mildly popular; Separate Tables (1958) a hotel-set drama with Kerr and Rita Hayworth (who married James Hill), which received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture and Oscar awards for lead actor David Niven and supporting actress Wendy Hiller, and was both a critical and commercial success; The Devil's Disciple (1959), with Douglas and Laurence Olivier, which lost money (and saw Lancaster fire Mackendrick during shooting);[35] and the Western The Unforgiven (1960), with Audrey Hepburn, which was a critical and commercial disappointment.

Lancaster starred in The Hallelujah Trail (1965), a comic Western produced and directed by John Sturges which failed to recoup its large cost.

In 1966, at the age of 52, Lancaster appeared nude in director Frank Perry's film The Swimmer (1968), in what the critic Roger Ebert called "his finest performance".

[43] Lancaster had one of the biggest successes of his career with Airport in 1970, starring alongside Dean Martin, George Kennedy, Van Heflin, Helen Hayes, Maureen Stapleton, Barbara Hale, Jean Seberg, and Jacqueline Bisset.

Lancaster was one of many names in 1975's 1900, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, and he had a cameo in 1976's Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson for Robert Altman.

[46] Lancaster began the 1980s with a highly acclaimed performance alongside Susan Sarandon in Atlantic City in 1980, directed by Louis Malle.

Corral (1957), The Devil's Disciple (1959), The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), Seven Days in May (1964), Victory at Entebbe (1976) and Tough Guys (1986), which fixed the notion of the pair as something of a team in the public imagination.

John Frankenheimer directed five films with Lancaster: The Young Savages (1961), Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), Seven Days in May (1964), The Train (1964), and The Gypsy Moths (1969).

[52] In 1968, Lancaster actively supported the presidential candidacy of anti-war Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, and frequently spoke on his behalf during the Democratic primaries.

[56] Lancaster delivered Hudson's last words at the Commitment to Life fundraiser at a time when the stigma surrounding AIDS was at its height.

[58] In 1947, Lancaster reportedly signed a statement release by the National Council of Arts, Sciences and Professions (NCASP) asking Congress to abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

[61] He and his second wife, Norma, hosted a fundraiser for Martin Luther King Jr. and the Student Diversity Leadership Conference (SDLC) ahead of the historic March on Washington in 1963.

"[65] In 1968, Lancaster was elected to serve as chairman of the Roger Baldwin Foundation, a newly formed fund-raising arm of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

In October 1968, he hosted a party at his home to raise money for the ACLU to use for the defense of the more than four hundred people arrested at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Norma was active in political causes with an entire room in their Bel Air home devoted to her major interest, the League of Woman Voters, crammed with printing presses and all the necessary supplies for mass mailings.

The couple held a fundraiser for Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference ahead of the 1963 March on Washington.

[69] All five of his children were with Anderson: Bill (who became an actor and screenwriter), James, Susan, Joanna (who worked as a film producer), and Sighle (pronounced "Sheila").

The relationship was tempestuous, with Bone once smashing a wine bottle over Lancaster's head at a dinner with Sydney Pollack and Peter Falk.

In his Hollywood memoirs, friend Farley Granger recalled an incident when Lancaster and he had to come to Winters' rescue one evening when she had inadvertently overdosed on alcohol and sleeping pills.

In 1988, he attended a congressional hearing in Washington, DC, with former colleagues who included James Stewart and Ginger Rogers to protest against media magnate Ted Turner's plan to colorize various black-and-white films from the 1930s and 1940s.

[83] Lancaster was nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role in 1954 for From Here to Eternity, in 1961 for Elmer Gantry, in 1964 for Birdman of Alcatraz, and in 1982 for Atlantic City.