His paternal grandmother, Russian born Natalya Kurkotova, was one-eighth Mongolian.
In 1950, before he achieved fame, he was the director of a children's puppet show on CBS, "Life with Snarky Parker" (1950), which lasted barely eight months on the air before cancellation.
Is a recipient of the presitigious Connor Award, given by the brothers of the Phi Alpha Tau fraternity based out of Emerson College in Boston.
Is the only actor to appear in both The Magnificent Seven (1960) and its first sequel, Return of the Seven (1966). He did not, however, appear in either of the other sequels, Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969) and The Magnificent Seven Ride! (1972).
Loved modern appliances.
Mentioned in the popular mid-1980s song "One Night in Bangkok," sung by Murray Head, from the soundtrack of the musical "Chess".
One of only eight actors to have won both a Tony and an Oscar for having portrayed the same roles on stage and screen. The others are Joel Grey (Cabaret (1972)), Shirley Booth (Come Back, Little Sheba (1952)), Rex Harrison (My Fair Lady (1964)), Anne Bancroft (The Miracle Worker (1962)), Paul Scofield (A Man for All Seasons (1966)), José Ferrer (Cyrano de Bergerac (1950)) and Jack Albertson (The Subject Was Roses (1968)).
Played the role of King Mongkut of Siam on stage, in the movies and in a short-lived television series.
Sometimes claimed that he was part-Japanese, that his birth name was Taidje Khan and that he hailed from the Russian island of Sakhalin. He was actually born as Yuli Borisovich Bryner to a Swiss/Russian father.
Son Yul 'Rock' Brynner II (b. 23 December 1946).
Three of his films were remade in the late 1990s, in rapid succession, as animated films: The King and I (1956) and Anastasia (1956) were remade as animated films of the same name The King and I (1999), Anastasia (1997)) and The Ten Commandments (1956) was remade as The Prince of Egypt (1998).
Was acting in an adaptation of Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night' (his Broadway debut), when Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese. That night's show was canceled and most of the crew enlisted soon after. The show lasted only 15 performances and Brynner was out of a job until 1943.
Was very good friends with Deborah Kerr.
When he found out he would be playing Pharaoh Rameses II opposite Charlton Heston's Moses in The Ten Commandments (1956) and that he would be shirtless for most of the film, he began a rigorous weight lifting program because he did not want to be physically overshadowed by Charlton Heston (which explains his buffer than normal physique during The King and I (1956) another film he was set to work on at the time.)
While touring in the play "Odyssey" in the mid-1970s, he attained a reputation for being a holy terror toward hotel staff members. Among other things, all hotel suites where he would stay had to be painted a certain shade of tan and all kitchens in those hotel suites had to be stocked in advance with "one dozen brown eggs, under no circumstances white ones!" (it should be noted, in fairness, that Brynner personally paid the expense of these requests). The play itself, later retitled "Home, Sweet Homer," had a successful pre-Broadway tour of over a year, but lasted exactly one performance when it opened on Broadway in 1976.
Won Broadway's 1952 Tony Award as Best Supporting or Featured Actor (Musical) for "The King and I," a role he recreated in his Oscar-winning performance in the film of the same name, The King and I (1956). He also won a second, Special Tony in 1985 "honoring his 4,525 performances in 'The King and I'."