Yul Brynner: The Life Story Behind the King and I Star

Yul Brynner was a man who invented himself, and then played that invention so well that the world believed it completely. He was born in Russia, grew up in China and France, worked as a trapeze artist, a guitarist and a radio announcer, and arrived in America with an accent nobody could quite place and a look nobody could forget. When he shaved his head for a role on Broadway, he did not just change his appearance. He created an image that would last for the rest of his life: the bald, bare-chested, commanding king, a man who did not ask for attention but expected it.

That image was The King and I, and it made him a star. He played the King of Siam on stage more than four thousand times, by most counts, and he won an Academy Award for the film version in 1956. He also played a pharaoh, a gunfighter, a Cossack and a robot, and in each part he brought the same stillness, the same deep voice, the same sense that he was in charge of the room. Audiences loved him for that certainty, even when the parts themselves were not always kind or fair.

Behind the certainty, there was a restless life. Brynner married several times, he had children, he travelled constantly, and he worked until his health failed. When he died of lung cancer in 1985, he left behind a recorded message warning people not to smoke, a message that was shown on television after his death. It was a final act of honesty from a man who had spent his life performing, and it is, in many ways, the most human thing he ever did.

Vladivostok, Harbin and a Childhood on the Move

Yul Brynner was born on 11 July 1920 in Vladivostok, a port city in the far east of Russia. His full name at birth was Yuliy Borisovich Briner, and his family was of mixed heritage, with Russian, Swiss and other European roots, a background that Brynner himself sometimes described in different ways over the years. His father was a mining engineer, and his mother was a doctor, and the family lived in a world that was about to change completely. The Russian Revolution had already happened, and the years that followed were uncertain, violent and confusing for families like his.

When Yul was still a child, the family moved to Harbin, in China, a city where many Russians had settled after the revolution. Harbin was a strange, crowded, international place, full of Russians, Chinese, Europeans and traders, and it gave the young Brynner a first taste of a life lived between cultures. He went to school there, he learned languages, and he began to understand that identity was not a simple thing. He was Russian, but he was not in Russia. He was European, but he was in Asia. He was, from the start, a person who belonged in more than one place and in none of them completely.

His parents separated when he was young, and his mother took him and his sister to Paris, where he spent much of his teenage years. Paris in the 1930s was a city of artists, musicians and exiles, and Brynner, who was tall, handsome and restless, found work as a trapeze artist in a circus, a job that taught him balance, discipline and a lack of fear. He also played the guitar, he sang Russian songs in cafes, and he learned to perform for strangers, to hold their attention, to make them laugh and to make them listen. It was not acting in the formal sense, but it was the beginning of a performer’s life.

He was injured in a fall from the trapeze, and the injury ended his circus career, but it did not end his ambition. He began to work in theatre in Paris, he learned French, and he began to think about acting as a serious craft. He was, by then, a young man with no fixed home, no fixed language and no fixed career, but with a great deal of confidence and a great deal of charm. Those two qualities, confidence and charm, would carry him a long way, and they would also, at times, get him into trouble.

The Second World War interrupted his life, as it interrupted so many lives. He worked for a French-language radio service in the United States during the war, broadcasting to occupied France, and he began to build a life in America. He was, by now, in his early twenties, and he had already lived in Russia, China and France. America would be his fourth home, and the one where he would become famous, though it would never quite feel like the only home he had.

New York, the Stage and Learning to Act in English

Brynner came to the United States in the early 1940s, and he began to work in theatre in New York. He studied acting, he took small parts, and he learned to act in English, a language he spoke with a strong accent that he never fully lost. That accent, which might have been a problem for another actor, became part of his appeal. It made him sound foreign, mysterious and authoritative, and directors began to cast him as men from far away, men who did not quite belong in the ordinary American world.

He worked as a director as well as an actor in those early years, and he learned the theatre from both sides: how a play is built, how a scene is staged, how an actor can command a room without moving. He also worked in television in its early days, directing and acting in live dramas, a form that demanded quick thinking and calm under pressure. It was a hard school, but it was a good one, and it taught him to be professional, to be prepared, and to trust his instincts.

His big break came in 1951, when he was cast as the King of Siam in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I, on Broadway. The show was based on the true story of Anna Leonowens, a British teacher who came to Siam, now Thailand, in the 1860s to teach the children of King Mongkut. Brynner played the King as a proud, intelligent, stubborn man who wants to learn about the modern world but refuses to be told what to do by anyone, least of all by a foreign teacher. It was a part that needed authority, humour and a kind of loneliness, and Brynner had all three.

He shaved his head for the role, and the look became his signature. The bald head, the bare chest, the wide stance, the deep voice: it was a powerful image, and it made him instantly recognisable. He played the King on Broadway for years, and he would return to the role again and again throughout his life, in revivals on stage and in tours around the world. It was a part that gave him fame, money and a place in theatre history, but it was also a part that, in some ways, trapped him, because audiences would always see the King first, whatever else he played.

The success of The King and I on stage led to the film version in 1956, with Deborah Kerr as Anna, and Brynner won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance. It was a remarkable achievement for a man who had arrived in America only a few years earlier, who had worked as a trapeze artist and a guitarist, and who had never been a conventional Hollywood leading man. He was, by then, a star, and Hollywood began to offer him leading roles in large films.

The Ten Commandments, The Magnificent Seven and the Hollywood Years

In the same year as The King and I film, Brynner also appeared in The Ten Commandments, Cecil B. DeMille’s great biblical epic, in which he played Rameses, the pharaoh of Egypt, opposite Charlton Heston as Moses. It was a large, commanding part, and Brynner played it with a cold, proud energy that made Rameses a worthy opponent for Moses. The film was a huge success, and it confirmed Brynner’s place as a leading man in epic films, a man who could play kings and rulers and make them feel real.

Four years later, in 1960, he starred in The Magnificent Seven, a western directed by John Sturges, in which he played Chris Adams, the leader of a group of gunfighters hired to protect a Mexican village from bandits. The film was based on the Japanese film Seven Samurai, and it became a classic of the western, with a cast that included Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson and James Coburn. Brynner was the calm centre of the film, the man who made the decisions, who kept the group together, and who understood the cost of violence. It was a different kind of king, a king of gunmen, and audiences loved it.

He made many other films in the 1950s and 1960s, including Anastasia, The Brothers Karamazov, Solomon and Sheba, Taras Bulba and Westworld, in which he played a robot gunslinger in a futuristic theme park, a part that used his stillness and his menace in a new way. Some of those films were good, and some were not, but Brynner brought the same intensity to each one. He was not an actor who disappeared into a part in the modern sense. He brought himself to the part, and the part became a version of him.

He also continued to work on stage, returning to The King and I whenever he could, and he toured the world with the show, playing to audiences in London, in Australia, in Asia and in America. It was a demanding life, travelling, performing night after night, living in hotels, and it took a toll on his health and on his family life. He married several times, and he had children, including a son, Rock, who later wrote about his father, and a daughter, Victoria. His marriages were often short, and his life was often unsettled, but he remained, throughout, a devoted father in his own way, and a man who took his work seriously.

The image of Brynner as a king, as a ruler, as a man in charge, was so strong that it sometimes hid the other sides of him: his humour, his love of music, his interest in photography, his kindness to friends. Those who knew him well spoke of a man who was generous, funny and loyal, a man who could be warm and open when he was not performing. The public image was only one part of him, but it was the part that sold tickets, and Brynner understood that, and he protected it carefully.

A Life of Travel, Marriages and the Price of Fame

Brynner’s personal life was as restless as his professional life. He married four times, and each marriage reflected a different stage of his life, a different country, a different set of hopes. His first wife was Virginia Gilmore, an American actress, and they had a son. His later marriages were to Doris Kleiner, to Jacqueline Thion de la Chaume, and to Kathy Lee, a dancer, with whom he had two children. He was, by all accounts, a charming husband and a difficult one, a man who loved deeply and who also loved his freedom, his work and his travels.

He lived in many places: New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Switzerland, and, for a time, in other parts of Europe. He spoke several languages, he collected art, he took photographs, and he enjoyed the life of a successful actor in the years when Hollywood stars were treated like royalty. He was also, in his own way, a private man, who did not like to talk about his childhood in Russia and China, and who sometimes gave different versions of his own story, as if he were still inventing himself, still deciding which parts of his past to keep and which to leave behind.

That habit of reinventing himself has made it hard for biographers to be certain about some details of his early life, and it is worth saying so plainly. Brynner himself told stories about his origins that did not always match the records, and he seemed, at times, to prefer a good story to a precise fact. It does not change the main facts of his career, but it does remind us that he was, above all, a performer, and that performance began long before he stepped onto a stage.

His health began to suffer in the 1970s, partly because he was a heavy smoker, a habit he had picked up as a young man and never gave up. He smoked for most of his life, and he knew, as many smokers do, that it was harming him, but he found it hard to stop. He continued to work, to tour with The King and I, to make films and television appearances, but his energy was fading, and his voice, which had always been one of his greatest assets, began to weaken.

In the early 1980s, he was diagnosed with lung cancer, and he underwent treatment, but the disease did not go away. He continued to perform as long as he could, and his final performances as the King, in the early 1980s, were marked by a quiet dignity, a man playing a king while knowing that his own life was coming to an end. Audiences who saw those performances often said that they could feel the weight of his illness in the part, and that it made the King seem more human, more vulnerable, and more real.

The Final Warning and the Last Performance

Yul Brynner died on 10 October 1985 in New York City, at the age of 65, from lung cancer. He had, before his death, recorded a message for television, a short, direct warning to smokers, in which he said, in effect, that if he could take back his smoking, he would, and that he did not want others to make the same mistake. The message was broadcast after his death, and it was shown in many countries, and it became one of the most powerful anti-smoking messages ever made, precisely because it came from a man who had been so strong, so commanding, and so full of life.

The message is still shown today, and it is still effective, because it does not sound like a lecture. It sounds like a man speaking plainly, from experience, about a choice he regrets. Brynner, who had spent his life playing kings, ended his life by speaking as a man, not as a king, and that final honesty has become, for many people, his most important legacy, more important, in a way, than any film or play.

His death was mourned around the world, and the tributes spoke of The King and I, of The Magnificent Seven, of The Ten Commandments, and of the image he had created, the bald head, the deep voice, the stillness. But they also spoke of his work as a photographer, of his love of music, of his generosity to friends, and of his final message. He was buried in France, in a cemetery near a monastery, a quiet place far from Broadway and Hollywood, and that choice, too, said something about the man behind the image: a man who had travelled the world and who, in the end, wanted a quiet resting place.

His legacy in theatre is secure. The King and I remains one of the great musicals, and Brynner’s performance remains the standard against which all later Kings are measured. His legacy in film is also secure, though it is more mixed, because some of his films have aged better than others. The Magnificent Seven and The Ten Commandments are still watched, still loved, still quoted, and Westworld, with its robot gunslinger, feels, in a strange way, ahead of its time. His work as a whole shows a man who could command a stage or a screen with very little movement, who understood that power is often quiet, and who knew how to make an audience listen by not shouting.

The King on Tour, the World Stage and a Role That Never Left

Brynner returned to the King again and again, not only on Broadway but on tours that took him to London, to Australia, to cities across America, and to audiences who had grown up with the film and who wanted, more than anything, to see the King live, in person, in a theatre, with the music, with the costumes, with the bald head and the bare chest, and Brynner gave them what they wanted, night after night, year after year, in a performance that was, by all accounts, as fresh in his sixties as it had been in his thirties. He knew the part so well that he could, in a sense, play it in his sleep, but he did not play it in his sleep. He played it, each night, with the same attention, the same stillness, the same deep voice, because he understood that an audience that had paid to see the King deserved the King, not a tired copy of him.

Touring was hard work, especially for a man in his fifties and sixties, with a body that was tired, with lungs that were damaged by smoking, with a voice that was, at times, weak, and with a family that was far away. He travelled with a company, he lived in hotels, he ate in restaurants, he rehearsed, he performed, and he did it, in many ways, because the King was not only a part for him, it was a home, a place he knew, a role he could return to when other roles were not there, a kind of anchor in a career that was, in other respects, restless and uncertain. The King paid well, the King was loved, and the King, in Brynner’s hands, was a guarantee: audiences knew what they would get, and they got it, and they left happy.

He also, in those touring years, became a kind of ambassador for the theatre, a man who brought a Broadway musical to places that rarely saw Broadway, who showed, in small cities and large ones, that theatre could be grand, could be beautiful, could be, in a word, royal. That work mattered, not only to Brynner, but to the audiences who saw him, many of whom had never seen a musical before, and who, because of Brynner, fell in love with the theatre, with the King, and with the idea that a story, told well, on a stage, can change a life, even for a few hours, even for one night.

My Take:

I have always been struck by the fact that Yul Brynner was, in a sense, a self-made man in the most literal way. He was not born Yul Brynner, the bald king. He was born Yuliy Briner, in Vladivostok, and he became Brynner through travel, through work, through choices, and through a haircut. That is not a criticism. It is, I think, a remarkable achievement. Most of us inherit an identity and spend our lives trying to live up to it. Brynner built his identity from scratch, and he built it so well that the world accepted it without question. That takes imagination, courage and a great deal of hard work.

What I admire most about him is his stillness. Watch him in The King and I, or in The Magnificent Seven, and you will see an actor who does very little and achieves a great deal. He does not wave his arms, he does not shout, he does not try to be funny or charming in the obvious way. He stands still, he looks at you, he speaks in a low voice, and you listen. That is a hard skill to learn, and it is a skill that many actors never learn, because stillness feels like doing nothing, and doing nothing feels like failure. Brynner understood that stillness is not nothing. It is power, held in reserve, and it is far more frightening, and far more compelling, than noise.

I also think about his childhood, and about how much moving he did as a boy. Vladivostok, Harbin, Paris, New York: four cities, four languages, four worlds, before he was thirty. That kind of life can make a person rootless, and it can make a person adaptable, and Brynner was both. He learned to perform in different languages, to work in different cultures, to make a home wherever he was, and to leave it when he had to. That adaptability served him well as an actor, because he could play a man from Siam, a man from Egypt, a man from Mexico, and make each one believable, not because he was from those places, but because he knew what it was to be a stranger, and to make a stranger’s life your own.

There is a part of his story that I find sad, and it is the part about The King and I trapping him. He played the King more than four thousand times, and that is an extraordinary achievement, but it is also a kind of cage. Audiences wanted the King, and they wanted him again and again, and Brynner gave it to them, because it paid well, because it was a great part, and because he loved it. But I wonder, sometimes, if he ever wished he could be known for something else, for a part that did not require a shaved head and a bare chest, for a quiet, ordinary man in a quiet, ordinary story. He did play other parts, and he played them well, but the King always came back, and the King always won.

His smoking, and his death from lung cancer, is the part of his story that stays with me most, because it is the part that feels most human. He was a strong man, a man who had survived a circus fall, who had crossed continents, who had played kings, and he could not stop smoking. That is not a failure of character. It is a reminder that addiction does not care how strong you are, or how famous you are, or how much you know. Brynner knew smoking was killing him, and he smoked anyway, for years, until it was too late. I do not say that to judge him. I say it because his final message, recorded before his death, is so honest, and so useful, precisely because it comes from a man who made the mistake and who wanted others not to make it.

I think that final message is the most important thing he ever did, more important than the Oscar, more important than The Magnificent Seven, more important than the thousands of performances as the King. An Oscar is a prize. A message that saves a life is something else. Brynner used his fame, in his last days, not to sell a film or to promote a show, but to warn strangers, people he would never meet, not to smoke. That is a generous act, and it is a brave act, because it required him to admit, in public, that he had made a mistake that had cost him his life. Many famous people would not do that. Brynner did, and I admire him for it.

If I am honest, I do not love every film he made. Some of them are dated, some of them are silly, and some of them use him in ways that feel lazy, as if the director thought that putting a bald, commanding man on screen was enough. Brynner deserved better scripts, and he deserved directors who would challenge him, who would ask him to be vulnerable, to be funny, to be ordinary. When he got those chances, as in The King and I, as in The Magnificent Seven, he showed what he could do. When he did not, he still worked hard, and he still gave the audience something to watch, but the films themselves did not always repay that effort.

I also think about his family life, and about how hard it must have been to be a child of a man who was always travelling, always performing, always the King. His son Rock wrote a book about him, and it is a loving book, but it is also a book about a father who was often absent, who was often larger than life, and who was hard to live with in ordinary ways. I do not want to judge Brynner as a father, because I do not know what it was like to be in that family, but I do think it is fair to say that fame, travel and a demanding career make family life harder, and that Brynner, like many stars of his time, paid a price for his success in his personal life, as did the people around him.

What I take from his life, in the end, is a lesson about making yourself. Brynner did not wait for the world to tell him who he was. He decided, and he worked, and he kept deciding, until the world believed him. That is a powerful lesson for anyone who feels that their birth, their background or their accent has decided their future for them. Brynner was born in a faraway port, he grew up in exile, he worked in a circus, and he became a king on Broadway. That is not a fairy tale. It is a life built by a man who refused to accept the first version of himself that the world offered him.

I also take from him a lesson about stillness, about the power of not trying too hard. In a world that is loud, fast and full of noise, Brynner’s performances remind me that sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is to stand still, to look, to listen, and to speak quietly. That is true on stage, and it is true in life. You do not have to shout to be heard. You have to be clear, you have to be steady, and you have to mean what you say. Brynner meant what he said, on stage and, in his final message, off it, and that is why people still listen.

I also think about his photography, and about his love of music, because those are the parts of Brynner that the public rarely saw, and that show a man who was, in private, an artist in the broadest sense. He took photographs, he played the guitar, he sang Russian songs, he collected art, and he did those things, not for fame, but for pleasure, for the joy of making something, of capturing a moment, of hearing a melody. That private art matters, because it shows that Brynner was not only the King, not only a star, but a person who loved beauty in many forms, and who, even when he was not performing, was still, in his own way, creating. I think many famous people have a private art like that, and it is often the art that keeps them sane, that gives them a life beyond the stage, and Brynner’s photography and music were, for him, that life.

There is a lesson in Brynner’s life about reinventing yourself that I want to name plainly, because it is a lesson that many people need today. He was born in one country, he grew up in another, he lived in a third, he worked as a trapeze artist, as a guitarist, as a radio announcer, as a director, as an actor, and he became, in the end, a king on Broadway. That is not a straight line. It is a winding road, a road with falls, with injuries, with changes of direction, and it shows that a life does not have to follow a plan, that you can start again, that you can learn a new skill, that you can move to a new country, and that you can, in the end, find the work you were meant to do, even if you find it late, even if you find it by accident. Brynner found his work late, and he did it well, and that is a hopeful story for anyone who feels that they have started too late, or that they have taken the wrong path.

His final message about smoking is, I have said, his most important legacy, and I want to add one more thought about it, because it is easy to hear that message and think, I already know smoking is bad, and to move on. But Brynner’s message is not only about smoking. It is about regret, about a man who, at the end of his life, looked back and wished he had made a different choice, and who wanted, with his last breath, to help strangers not to make the same mistake. That is a generous, human act, and it is a reminder that it is never too late to warn, to help, to be honest, even when honesty means admitting that you were wrong. I hope that message is still shown, still heard, and still, in some small way, saving lives, because that would be a fitting end for a man who played kings: to use his fame, in the end, not for himself, but for others.

I think about Brynner’s voice, and about how much of his power came from sound, not only from stillness. His voice was deep, it was accented, it was, in a way, musical, and when he spoke, in The King and I, in The Magnificent Seven, in The Ten Commandments, audiences listened, not because he shouted, but because he spoke slowly, clearly, and with a certainty that made every word sound important. That is a rare gift, and it is one that many actors spend a lifetime trying to learn, and Brynner, who had worked in radio, who had learned to speak French, English, Russian, who had learned to perform in different languages, understood, deeply, that a voice is an instrument, and that it must be cared for, used well, and, above all, trusted. His voice, like his face, like his stillness, was a part of his art, and it is, today, still remembered, still imitated, still loved, by people who have heard it once and never forgotten it.

There is also a thought I want to leave about his shaved head, because it is easy to think of it as a gimmick, as a trick, as a way to look different, and it was, in a sense, a trick, but it was also, in a deeper sense, a choice, a choice to be seen, to be remembered, to create an image that would last. Many actors try to create an image, and few succeed, because an image, to last, must be true, must come from something real, and Brynner’s bald head was true, because it was not a wig, it was not a costume, it was his head, shaved, bare, honest, and audiences saw, in that bare head, a man who was not hiding, a man who was, in a way, more honest than other actors, because he had nothing to hide behind, no hair, no disguise, only his face, his voice, and his stillness. That honesty is, I think, why the image lasted, and why, today, when people think of a king on stage, they think, often without knowing why, of a bald man, in a gold robe, standing still, and speaking in a deep voice.

Finally, I want to say that Brynner’s life, for all its fame, for all its travel, for all its marriages, was, in the end, a life about a man who made himself, who invented himself, and who, in inventing himself, gave the world a king, a gunfighter, a pharaoh, and a warning about smoking, and who, in doing so, left a mark that is still, today, visible, in the theatre, in film, in the anti-smoking message that is still shown, and in the memory of audiences who saw him, once, on stage, and never forgot him. That is a life worth remembering, not only for the King, but for the man who played him, a man from Vladivostok, from Harbin, from Paris, from New York, a man who belonged everywhere and nowhere, and who, in the end, belonged to the stage, to the screen, and to the world that loved him.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where was Yul Brynner born and how did he reach America?

He was born on 11 July 1920 in Vladivostok, Russia, as Yuliy Borisovich Briner, then lived as a child in Harbin, China, and as a teenager in Paris, before coming to the United States in the early 1940s, where he worked in theatre, radio and early television.

Why did Yul Brynner shave his head?

He shaved his head for the role of the King of Siam in the Broadway musical The King and I in 1951, and the bald look became his trademark for the rest of his career, in the stage show, in the film, and in many later roles.

Did Yul Brynner win an Oscar for The King and I?

Yes, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the 1956 film version of The King and I, playing the King opposite Deborah Kerr as Anna Leonowens, after already playing the part to great success on Broadway.

What other famous films did Yul Brynner star in?

His best-known films include The Ten Commandments from 1956, in which he played the pharaoh Rameses, The Magnificent Seven from 1960, in which he led the gunfighters as Chris Adams, and Westworld from 1973, in which he played a robot gunslinger.

How many times did Yul Brynner play the King of Siam on stage?

He played the role on stage more than four thousand times over several decades, in the original Broadway run, in revivals, and on tours around the world, making it one of the most performed leading roles in musical theatre history.

What was Yul Brynner’s warning about smoking?

Before he died of lung cancer on 10 October 1985, he recorded a television message urging people not to smoke, saying that if he could take back his smoking he would, and the message was broadcast after his death and is still shown as an anti-smoking warning.