--- name: "Yul Brynner" canonical: "https://film.one/person/yul-brynner-14528" roles: ["Actor"] born: "11 July 1920" died: "10 October 1985" reviewed_on_fi1m: 2 average_fi1m_score: 69 average_as: "actor" average_over: 2 updated: "2026-09-20T03:09:15.175619+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Yul Brynner Actor. Born 11 July 1920 in Vladivostok, Russia. Died 10 October 1985. ## Details - **Work:** Actor - **Born:** 11 July 1920, Vladivostok, Russia - **Died:** 10 October 1985 - **Also known as:** Yuli Borisovich Bryner - **Academy Awards:** 1 Oscar (1 won) - **Average Fi1m score:** 69, as actor, over 2 titles - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yul_Brynner, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q102813, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000989/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/14528 ## Streaming the US now - **Amazon Prime Video:** [*The King and I*](https://film.one/film/the-king-and-i.md) (71), [*The Ten Commandments*](https://film.one/film/the-ten-commandments.md) (67) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Yul Brynner > Yul Brynner played kings, pharaohs and gunfighters with his chest out, his fists on his hips and his voice pitched for the back row. It is a large, stylised way of acting, and in the right film it is exactly the right size. Watch what Yul Brynner does with his hands in *The King and I* (1956). They go to his hips and stay there, elbows out, so that a barefoot man in silk trousers takes up as much of the wide frame as Deborah Kerr's hoop skirt. He barks "et cetera, et cetera, et cetera" at anyone who finishes a thought before he does. He does not move like a film actor. He moves like a man who has to be seen from the back of the gallery, and he had been: he had played Mongkut on stage since 1951, and he went on playing him until the year he died. The training explains a good deal. He was a circus acrobat, then a theatre apprentice in Paris, and he arrived in America in 1941 with a body that knew how to hold a pose and a voice that could fill a hall. Broadway came first, with *Lute Song* in 1946; the film debut was *Port of New York* in 1949. Then came 1956, and three films in it: *The King and I*, *The Ten Commandments* as Rameses, and *Anastasia* as General Bounine. Hollywood had decided what he was for, which was a foreign man in charge. He knew it, and said so without complaint: he played, in his words, "a lot of strange characters in a lot of strange lands". The strange lands soon included the Old West. *The Magnificent Seven* (1960) put him at the head of the gunfighters as Chris Adams, the one who talks least and is obeyed most, and it is the King with the volume turned down: the same stillness, the same posture, the same sense that everyone else has to arrange themselves around him. He worked three times with Anatole Litvak and kept at the epics and Westerns through the sixties, and by *Westworld* (1973) he was playing a robot gunslinger, which is where a career of playing men who never blink was always going to arrive. The complaint, made since 1956, is that this is ham: flamboyant, stylised, every gesture too clean. Sometimes it is. Comedy did not suit him and nor did ordinary Americans in ordinary clothes, and the films that asked for either left him stranded. But look at *Shall We Dance?*. Brynner puts his hand on Kerr's waist, she shows him the polka, and the shot is held as they go round the floor and round again. We thought we knew the scene, and our throat tightened anyway, because for two minutes a man who has spent the whole film striking attitudes stops striking them and simply dances with someone he cannot have. He shaved his head for Mongkut and never grew the hair back. He played the part 4,625 times. Few actors have been so certain what they were for, or kept proving it for so long. ## Biography Yul Brynner, also credited as Yuli Borisovich Bryner, was a Russian-born American stage and film actor. He was born on 11 July 1920 in Vladivostok and died on 10 October 1985 in New York City. Brynner achieved prominence for his portrayal of King Mongkut of Siam in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical *The King and I*, which he performed more than 4,000 times on stage from 1951 onwards and reprised in the 1956 film adaptation, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. He also played Rameses in Cecil B. DeMille’s *The Ten Commandments* (1956). Other notable film roles include Chris Adams in *The Magnificent Seven* (1960) and the Gunslinger in *Westworld* (1973). He maintained a shaved head as a personal trademark after adopting it for *The King and I*. *Sources: britannica.com, en.wikipedia.org, biography.com.* ## On Fi1m (2) - *The King and I* (1956), Fi1m 71, as King Mongkut of Siam — [page](https://film.one/film/the-king-and-i.md) - *The Ten Commandments* (1956), Fi1m 67, as Rameses — [page](https://film.one/film/the-ten-commandments.md) ## Complete filmography (51) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *Broadway's Lost Treasures* (2003), as The King of Siam (segment "The King and I") - *Death Rage* (1976), as Peter Marciani - *Futureworld* (1976), as The Gunslinger - *The Ultimate Warrior* (1975), as Carson - *Westworld* (1973), as The Gunslinger - *The Serpent* (1973), as Col. Alexi Vlassov - *Anna and the King* (1972), series, as King Mongkut - *Fuzz* (1972), as The Deaf Man - *Catlow* (1971), as Catlow - *Romance of a Horsethief* (1971), as Captain Stoloff - *The Light at the Edge of the World* (1971), as Jonathan Kongre - *The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun* (1970), Still Photographer - *Adiós, Sabata* (1970), as Sabata / Indio Black - *The Magic Christian* (1969), as Transvestite Cabaret Singer - *The File of the Golden Goose* (1969), as Peter Novak - *The Madwoman of Chaillot* (1969), as The Chairman - *The Battle of Neretva* (1969), as Vlado - *Villa Rides* (1968), as Pancho Villa - *The Long Duel* (1967), as Sultan - *The Double Man* (1967), as Dan Slater / Kalmar - *Triple Cross* (1966), as Baron von Grunen - *Return of the Seven* (1966), as Chris Adams - *The Poppy Is Also a Flower* (1966), as Colonel Salem - *Cast a Giant Shadow* (1966), as Asher Gonen - *Morituri* (1965), as Captain Müller - *Invitation to a Gunfighter* (1964), as Jules Gaspard d'Estaing - *Flight from Ashiya* (1964), as TSgt. Mike Takashima - *Kings of the Sun* (1963), as Chief Black Eagle - *Taras Bulba* (1962), as Taras Bulba - *Escape from Zahrain* (1962), as Sharif - *Goodbye Again* (1961), as Extra in Nightclub Scene - *The Magnificent Seven* (1960), as Chris Adams - *Surprise Package* (1960), as Nico March - *Testament of Orpheus* (1960), as L'huissier (non crédité) - *Once More, with Feeling!* (1960), as Victor Fabian - *Solomon and Sheba* (1959), as Solomon - *The Sound and the Fury* (1959), as Jason Compson - *The Journey* (1959), as Major Surov - *The Buccaneer* (1958), as Jean Lafitte - *Houseboat* (1958), Still Photographer - *The Brothers Karamazov* (1958), as Dmitri Karamazov - *Anastasia* (1956), as General Sergei Pavlovich Bounine - *The Ten Commandments* (1956), as Rameses — Fi1m 67, [page](https://film.one/film/the-ten-commandments.md) - *The King and I* (1956), as King Mongkut of Siam — Fi1m 71, [page](https://film.one/film/the-king-and-i.md) - *Danger* (1950), series, Director - *Sure As Fate* (1950), series, Director - *Flowers from a Stranger* (1950), as Dr. Nestri - *Port of New York* (1949), as Paul Vicola - *Flowers from a Stranger* (1949), as Dr. Nestri - *Studio One* (1948), series, as Dr. Nestri · Director - *Actors Studio* (1948), series, Director ## Gallery - ![Yul Brynner](https://film.one/media/person/1239017/gallery-78e486d4b5a0.jpg) Yul Brynner — CBS Television, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Yul_Brynner_Anna_and_the_King_television_1972.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled) - ![Yul Brenner on the set of the film The Light at the Edge of the World in Spain. (1970)](https://film.one/media/person/1239017/gallery-0b4f42d42300.jpg) Yul Brenner on the set of the film The Light at the Edge of the World in Spain. (1970) — Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/Filmopnamen_The_light_of_the_end_of_the_world_in_Spanje._Yul_Brunner%2C_Bestanddeelnr_923-8618.jpg/1280px-Filmopnamen_The_light_of_the_end_of_the_world_in_Spanje._Yul_Brunner%2C_Bestanddeelnr_923-8618.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Jul Briner u Sarajevu, 1969. Autor fotografije Stevan Kragujević (po odobrenju Tanje Kragujević)](https://film.one/media/person/1239017/gallery-59deec12b243.jpg) Jul Briner u Sarajevu, 1969. Autor fotografije Stevan Kragujević (po odobrenju Tanje Kragujević) — Stevan Kragujević, CC BY-SA 3.0 rs, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/S.Kragujevic%2C_Yul_Brynner_in_Sarajevo%2C1969.JPG/1280px-S.Kragujevic%2C_Yul_Brynner_in_Sarajevo%2C1969.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Yul Brynner as the King, from a 1977 souvenir program for The King and I. Lacks any copyright notice, so it is no longer under copyright. Image can be found her](https://film.one/media/person/1239017/gallery-326ae5c311c8.jpg) Yul Brynner as the King, from a 1977 souvenir program for The King and I. Lacks any copyright notice, so it is no longer under copyright. Image can be found her — Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ea/Brynner_1977.jpg/1280px-Brynner_1977.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Yul Brynner](https://film.one/media/person/1239017/gallery-defda10faa60.jpg) Yul Brynner — Image via TMDB - ![Yul Brynner](https://film.one/media/person/1239017/gallery-5774ddafb972.jpg) Yul Brynner — Image via TMDB - ![Yul Brynner](https://film.one/media/person/1239017/gallery-1c24d65e0a94.jpg) Yul Brynner — Image via TMDB - ![Yul Brynner as the King, from a 1977 souvenir program for The King and I. Lacks any copyright notice, so it is no longer under copyright. Image photographed wit](https://film.one/media/person/1239017/gallery-b7b2b9bd4be9.jpg) Yul Brynner as the King, from a 1977 souvenir program for The King and I. Lacks any copyright notice, so it is no longer under copyright. Image photographed wit — Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ef/Puzzlement.jpg/1280px-Puzzlement.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Yul Brynner](https://film.one/media/person/1239017/gallery-259ad257b79e.jpg) Yul Brynner — Image via TMDB - ![Yul Brynner](https://film.one/media/person/1239017/gallery-ce227bbf5358.jpg) Yul Brynner — Image via TMDB - ![Yul Brynner](https://film.one/media/person/1239017/gallery-ec1c0c157572.jpg) Yul Brynner — Image via TMDB ## Awards ### Academy Awards — 1 won - 1957: Best Actor (won), for *The King and I* ### Golden Globes — 0 won, 1 nominated - 1956: Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy (nominated), for *The King and I* ### Other awards — 5 won, 1 nominated - Grammy Hall of Fame 1999: Grammy Hall of Fame (won), for *The King and I* - Special Tony Award 1985: Special Tony Award (won) - Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical 1977: Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical (nominated) - National Board of Review Award for Best Actor 1956: National Board of Review Award for Best Actor (won), for *The Ten Commandments* - Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical 1952: Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical (won), for *The King and I* - Tony Awards 1952: Tony Awards (won) *From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.* --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/yul-brynner-14528