He won Oscars as best supporting actor in Viva Zapata in 1952 and as the painter Paul Gauguin in Lust for Life four years later.
But, in all, he was in more than 150 films, and though at first he was usually cast as any variation of uncouth ruffian, he branched out considerably, and even played the Pope in Shoes of the Fisherman.
He won Oscars as best supporting actor in Viva Zapata in 1952 and as the painter Paul Gauguin in Lust for Life four years later.
Anthony Quinn was born in Mexico to an Irish father and Mexican mother. The family moved to Los Angeles when he was a small boy, though it was not until the 1940s that he became a naturalised US citizen.
Though he began as a stage actor, he started film work in 1936. He appeared in Blood and Sand in 1941, and was Chief Crazy Horse in They Died With Their Boots On, about General Custer, in the same year.
Soon after Viva Zapata came Fellini's La Strada, which brought him an award at the Venice Film Festival.
A spell on Broadway, playing Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire, gave Quinn's film career a considerable boost. He earned parts in The Guns of Navarone and Lawrence of Arabia, and then came Zorba the Greek.
His later films included The Secret of Santa Vittoria and The Greek Tycoon, in which he played a thinly disguised Aristotle Onassis.
The critics never seemed to know quite what to make of Quinn. He could give sensitive dramatic performances, but too often he seemed to be simply Quinn playing Quinn.
His personal life was almost as flamboyant as many of his film parts. He was married first to the adopted daughter of Cecil B. de Mille though his father-in-law did nothing to help his career.
Oddly enough, at the 1987 Golden Globe Awards he received the Cecil B. De Mille Award for career achievement. His second marriage lasted more than 20 years, but during it he admitted relationships with a number of other women, one of whom bore him two children.
His first child drowned, at the age of three, in W.C. Fields's swimming pool.
In all, Anthony Quinn fathered thirteen children from his marriages and extra-marital relationships.
Away from acting, Quinn was a dedicated and highly successful sculptor and painter. His work sold throughout the world for high prices. He once said that without art there was no reason for living.