Charlton Heston's Wife, Actress Lydia Clarke Heston, Dies at 95
Actress Lydia Clarke Heston, who was married to late Oscar winner Charlton Heston for 64 years, died Monday. She was 95.
Clarke Heston was known for her roles in Sidney Kingsley’s Detective Story on Broadway, which opened in 1949; her first feature, Atomic City, opposite Gene Barry; and The Greatest Show on Earth, which premiered in 1952 and also starred her husband.
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Hailing from Wisconsin, Clarke Heston met Charlton in an acting class at Northwestern University. They married in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1944, before he went overseas to serve in World War II.
In the mid-50s, the mother of two left acting to pursue another artistic medium: photography. According to The Hollywood Reporter, her work was placed in galleries worldwide and published in multiple books.
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“She lived an amazing life,” the couple’s son, Fraser, told Fox News. “At 95 years old she knew a lot of famous people from John F. Kennedy to Nancy and Ronald Reagan.”
Fraser also shared that his mother “sailed every sea in the world” despite being “prone to sea-sickness” and that her personality was “active” and “vibrant.”
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Clarke Heston also actively participated in the Civil Rights Movement. In 1963, she joined and photographed the March on Washington.
She died at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica, California, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Charlton Heston was famous for playing Moses in 1956’s The Ten Commandments, as well as Ben-Hur (1959) and Planet of the Apes (1968). He died on April 5, 2008, at 84.
