Screen Icon Tony Curtis Dies At 85

Hollywood legend Tony Curtis passed away Wednesday night in his Las Vegas home of cardiac arrest. Known for his classically handsome face and rough-and-tumble appeal, Curtis had a long, versatile career.

He was perhaps best known for the iconic 1959 comedy, Some Like It Hot, where he dressed in drag alongside Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe. But Curtis was equally successful with dramatic fare like Spartacus and The Defiant Ones, a movie that earned him an Academy Award nomination.

Curtis had far humbler beginnings. Born in 1925 in New York to Hungarian immigrants, he often scrounged for food and was sent to a state institution during the Great Depression when his parents could not provide for him. After a short time in the Navy during World War II, he eventually began acting, landing a contract in 1948.

The attractive actor was known as a ladies man and was married six times, most famously to the Hitchcock heroine Janet Leigh, with whom he had daughter Jamie Lee Curtis. His last role was in 2008, in the independent movie David and Fatima. –AMY LEE