He had remarried, twice. Here are a few interesting bits:

But privately, he was a devoted family man with four children.

That family, divided by his marriage to a third wife, 41 years his junior, was said to have set aside its differences and reunited on his deathbed.

He was described by Michael Winner, the British director with whom he made six films, as being "very shy" and "hating his voice".

But Winner added that Bronson was "a great professional, knew exactly what he was doing, didn't mess about and was an interesting character beneath that".

Over the past year, divisions had been reported within his family over his multi-million-dollar fortune and his property, which included a 33-room house in Bel Air and a large farm in Vermont.

His third wife, the former actress Kim Weeks, who married him in December 1998 when he was 77 and she was 36, sought control of his estate.

But opposition from the rest of his family was said to have been set aside as they struggled to decide whether or not to switch off his life-support machine...

The key to his acting was "the repressed fury, the constant feeling that if you don't watch the screen every minute, you'll miss the eruption", said Winner.

John Houston, who also directed Bronson, likened his no-nonsense style to "a hand grenade with the pin pulled".

Bronson met Ireland, his second wife, while shooting The Great Escape in Germany.

The British actress was married to David McCallum, his friend and co-star, and Bronson visited her in hospital when she suffered a miscarriage during shooting.

Ireland said of him: "I saw in this man such unbelievable tenderness, such depth of feeling for my plight.

"I had never come across anyone like Charlie before. He was savage and primitive. He said and did things no Englishman would ever do."

The couple were inseparable, starring together in 11 films. He nursed her through a long illness before she died of breast cancer in 1990 at the age of 54.

Despite his fame and reputation, Bronson insisted that he needed no one apart from his family and said his best friends were his children.

Bronson never denied he had a temper but said he could "afford to be mild because I don't have the fears that most men have about masculinity or macho-ness"....

Although generally happy with his oft-reprised action hero role, Bronson once said: "I have often thought how lovely it would be to lean on a mantelpiece with a cocktail in my hand and let the dialogue do the acting."