Lee Van Cleef Overview:

Character actor, Lee Van Cleef, was born Clarence Leroy Van Cleef Jr. on Jan 9, 1925 in Somerville, NJ. Van Cleef died at the age of 64 on Dec 16, 1989 in Oxnard, CA and was laid to rest in Forest Lawn (Hollywood Hills) Cemetery in Los Angeles, CA.

MINI BIO:

Lean, dark-haired, narrow-eyed American actor, almost entirely confined to westerns. After he switched to acting instead of taking over his father's accountancy business, he spent more than a decade in films as ugly villains (with the occasional American Indian thrown in) with itchy trigger fingers. Then he lost his hair, grew a mustache and, recovered from a severe car crash in 1959, pleasantly surprised his fans by becoming a star of spaghetti westerns in the wake of Clint Eastwood. Died from a heart attack.

(Source: available at Amazon Quinlan's Film Character Actors: an Illustrated Directory).

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Lee Van Cleef Quotes:

Frank Talby: All right Scott, you can come with me, but don't get your hopes up to high, 'cause it's a dirty life.


Monco: You mind telling me how you got here?
Col. Douglas Mortimer: I just reasoned it out. I figured you'd tell Indio to do just exactly the opposite of what we agreed, and he's suspicious enough to figure out something else. Since El Paso was out of the question, well, here I am!


[Mortimer has just recovered the watch from Indio, which contains a picture of the woman that Indio raped]
Monco: There seems to be a family resemblance.
Col. Douglas Mortimer: Naturally, between brother and sister.


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Lee Van Cleef Facts
Was on the short list of actors under consideration for arms dealer Brad Whitaker in The Living Daylights (1987).

Son of Clarence Leroy Van Cleef and wife Maria Lavinia Van Fleet, both mostly of Dutch ancestry.

During one summer in the early 1950s he was a camp counselor in NYC for Marc Furstenberg.

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