Richard W. Farnsworth (September 1, 1920 – October 6, 2000) was an American actor and stuntman. His film career began in 1937, however he achieved his greatest success for his performances in The Grey Fox (1982) and The Straight Story (1999), for which he received a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Actor.
Farnsworth was born in Los Angeles, California to a housewife mother and an engineer father. He was raised during the Great Depression....
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Richard W. Farnsworth (September 1, 1920 – October 6, 2000) was an American actor and stuntman. His film career began in 1937, however he achieved his greatest success for his performances in The Grey Fox (1982) and The Straight Story (1999), for which he received a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Actor.
Farnsworth was born in Los Angeles, California to a housewife mother and an engineer father. He was raised during the Great Depression. He lived with his aunt, mother and two sisters in downtown Los Angeles after his father died when he was seven years old.
He was working as a stable hand at a polo field in Los Angeles for $6 a week, when he was offered a chance to make $7 a day plus a box lunch as a stuntman. When he was seventeen, he started by riding horses in films in 1937, in The Adventures of Marco Polo with Gary Cooper. He performed in several horse-riding stunts in such films as the Marx Brothers' A Day at the Races (1937) and Gunga Din (1939). What differentiated...
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