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"There's only so much you can witness", he said of his time overseas. Indeed, his war decorations were hard-earned. Charles Durning was the only man to survive a machine gun ambush on Omaha Beach - and he had to rise above serious wounds to kill seven German gunners to do it. Months later in Belgium, he was stabbed eight times by a German teenage soldier wielding a bayonet. Durning eventually bludgeoned him to death with a rock. Durning was released from the hospital in time to fight in the Battle of the Bulge, where he was taken prisoner. After escaping a subsequent massacre of the other prisoners, he was obliged by American forces to return to the scene and help identify bodies. Finally, a bullet in the chest a few months later ended his relentless tour of duty - and began four years of repeated hospitalizations for his physical and psychological injuries. In an interview with Parade Magazine, Durning said of his post-war years, "I dropped into a void for almost a decade. The physical injuries heal first. It's your mind that's hard to heal." And as he points out, it's not just a matter of what's been done to you, but what you find yourself capable of doing. "There are many secrets is us, in the depths of our souls, that we don't want anyone to know about. There's terror and repulsion in us, horrifying things we keep secret. A lot of that is released through acting." Acting was precisely what gave Charles Durning a new lease on life. The seeds that had been planted when he was a boy, growing up in Highland Falls, N.Y., with his Mother, a West Point laundress, and four brothers and sisters (his father, a sergeant in the Army, had died when Charles was 12 years old). After leaving home at the age of 16, Charles worked as an usher at a Buffalo burlesque house, where the antics of the bawdy comics - and a one-night chance to fill in for for one who was too drunk to go on stage - convinced Charles that a life on the stage was what he wanted. By the late 1940's, he began training at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and started an on-again, off-again path that zigzagged through dance bands, small nightclubs, and Off-Broadway roles. In 1973 a plum Broadway turn in That Championship Season led to a role in The Sting, with Paul Newman and Robert Redford. This breakthrough part established Durning as one of the country's leading character actors with more than 70 films to his credit. His TV credits are equally impressive. "It's the work, the opportunity to do good work, that's what inspires me. And I enjoy doing a good play more than anything", says Durning. In fact, his theatrical credits rival his achievements on the big and little screens. "I've been obsessed with character acting", he says. "It's been my dream."
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