Yul Brynner: Real Name, Movies, Children, Death & Feuds

Born: July 11, 1920, Vladivostok, Russia ·
Died: October 10, 1985, New York City, U.S. ·
Oscar: Best Actor for The King and I (1956) ·
Height: 5 ft 10 in (178 cm) ·
Children: 4 ·
Marriages: 4

Ten rows, one pattern: the details that get repeated in every Brynner article are not always the details he actually lived.

What was Yul Brynner’s real name?

Biography.com confirms that he worked professionally as Yul Brynner (Biography.com profile). The original name on the record — Yuliy Borisovich Briner — came with variable spelling: Briner, Bryner, Brynner all appear.

What was Yul Brynner’s ethnicity?

• Father: Boris Brynner, Swiss descent; mother: Marousia Blagovidova, Russian; the family line also includes Buryat ancestry (Wikipedia biography).

Brynner leaned into the exotic side of that background. The result was a screen persona that felt international at a time when studios prized global stars.

What was Yul Brynner’s height?

• Actor profiles list him at 5 ft 10 in (178 cm) (Biography.com profile).

His height mattered less than the posture. Brynner carried himself like someone who expected the room to quiet down, and the camera read that as royalty.

Did Yul Brynner have hair?

• He shaved his head early in his career and made the bald look part of his signature image (Wikipedia biography).

It was a practical choice that became a branding decision. Once the image clicked, there was no going back.

The implication: Brynner’s biography was partly a performance. Even the hairline was a career move.

The takeaway is not to distrust every record; it is to see the persona as Brynner’s most consistent performance.

What western movies did Yul Brynner play in?

Brynner made his name on Broadway, but the movies that kept him famous for later generations were westerns — or western-adjacent.

What are Yul Brynner’s movies in order?

• 1956 — The King and I (Oscar-winning role) (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
• 1956 — The Ten Commandments and Anastasia (Biography.com profile)
• 1960 — The Magnificent Seven (Wikipedia biography)
• 1964 — Invitation to a Gunfighter (Wikipedia biography)
• 1966 — Return of the Seven (Wikipedia biography)
• 1968 — Villa Rides (Wikipedia biography)
• 1971 — Catlow (Wikipedia biography)
• 1973 — Westworld (Wikipedia biography)
• 1976 — Death Rage and Futureworld; order disputed (IMDb biography)

The two that define his western legacy are the bookends: The Magnificent Seven, where he leads a group of hired guns, and Westworld, where he plays the Gunslinger, a robot in a futuristic theme park (Wikipedia biography).

The pattern: Brynner kept returning to the isolated, authoritative man until Westworld made the archetype literal and turned him into a machine.

Did Yul Brynner ever have any children?

The family record is the part of Brynner’s life that survived the image-making: four children, four marriages, and an obituary that listed them all.

How many times was Yul Brynner married?

• Children: Yul “Rock” Brynner, Victoria Brynner, Melody Brynner, Lisa Brynner (The New York Times).
• Marriages: Virginia Gilmore, Doris Kleiner, Jacqueline Thion de la Chaume, Kathy Lee (The New York Times).

His son Rock was born in 1946, early in the stage-career climb, and his daughters followed across his later marriages. The New York Times obituary set the family record on the record in 1985 (The New York Times).

The catch: for a man who played a monarch on stage, the household Brynner built echoed the same structure — a single commanding figure, surrounded by a family that was rarely asked to share the spotlight.

Was Yul Brynner nice in real life?

The honest answer is that the surviving record is mixed. On set, Brynner ran a tight ship; off set, he was a larger-than-life presence who did not tolerate challenges to his status.

How wealthy was Yul Brynner?

• Exact net worth at death: not publicly verified.
• Reported figures vary across retrospectives and should be treated as estimates.
• Stage income alone: more than 4,000 performances of The King and I (Encyclopaedia Britannica).

The 4,000-plus performances are the best documented part of his earnings story; the rest was private. No trusted estate accounting was ever published.

The trade-off: Brynner bought privacy by making the public image so large that the private man mostly disappeared from view.

Why did Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner not get along?

The feud that became part of Hollywood lore started on the set of The Magnificent Seven.

What happened on the set of The Magnificent Seven?

• McQueen was a rising star and reportedly found ways to draw focus during Brynner’s close-ups (Los Angeles Times).
• Brynner was the established name and resented the competitive behavior (Los Angeles Times).
• Retrospective accounts say McQueen later expressed regret or apology for his conduct (Los Angeles Times).

The conflict was not a secret on set, and it followed both actors in interviews for years.

What this means: the feud was a collision between two models of stardom — Brynner’s top-down authority and McQueen’s hungry improvisation.

What did Yul Brynner die from?

Brynner died of lung cancer on October 10, 1985, in New York City. UPI Archives placed him at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center and reported that his representative said at the time that the cause was multiple complications from cancer (UPI Archives). Later biographical summaries identify the cancer as lung cancer (Biography.com profile).

What was Yul Brynner’s last movie?

• Death Rage (1976) and Futureworld (1976) both released in 1976; sources differ on which is definitively his last (IMDb biography).

By the early 1980s Brynner had largely returned to the stage, which is where his career always felt most at home.

What was Yul Brynner’s last stage role?

• King Mongkut in The King and I — he continued performing the role until shortly before his death (UPI Archives).

Brynner’s death had a public-service coda: he had smoked heavily for years, and before he died he recorded an anti-smoking warning meant to air after his death. The same smoking-and-cancer arc that defined Humphrey Bogart’s death repeated itself with Brynner.

Why this matters: the anti-smoking PSA turned a private addiction into a final public statement — exactly the kind of controlled exit Brynner spent his career managing.

Yul Brynner life and career timeline

Nine dates, one through-line: a performer who kept revising his own origin story even as his public identity hardened.

• July 11, 1920 (recorded date): Yuliy Borisovich Briner is born in Vladivostok, Russia (Encyclopaedia Britannica).
• 1944: Marries Virginia Gilmore (The New York Times).
• 1946: Son Yul “Rock” Brynner is born (The New York Times).
• 1956: Wins Academy Award for Best Actor for The King and I (The New York Times).
• 1960: Stars in The Magnificent Seven; tension with Steve McQueen develops (Los Angeles Times).
• 1962: Daughter Victoria Brynner is born (The New York Times).
• 1967: Marries Jacqueline Thion de la Chaume (The New York Times).
• 1973: Plays the Gunslinger in Westworld (Wikipedia biography).
• 1985: Dies from lung cancer on October 10 in New York City (UPI Archives).

The pattern: Brynner’s public timeline is stable from 1944 onward; the uncertainty collapses almost entirely onto his early years — which is exactly where a self-created identity would leave its fingerprints.

What’s confirmed, what’s still disputed

For the confirmed core, Encyclopaedia Britannica is the cleanest starting point, and the obituaries cited above fill in the rest.

Confirmed facts

• Real name: Yuliy Borisovich Briner (Encyclopaedia Britannica).
• Won the Oscar for The King and I (1956) (The New York Times).
• Died October 10, 1985, from lung cancer (UPI Archives; Biography.com profile).
• Had four children and four marriages (The New York Times).

What’s still disputed

The list below tracks the open questions. The Los Angeles Times flagged the birth-year problem at the time of his death (Los Angeles Times); the other disputes come from the same record.

• Birth year: 1915, 1917, or 1920 (Los Angeles Times).
• Exact net worth at death.
• Number of languages spoken — 11 often claimed, not firmly verified.
• Exact details and date of Steve McQueen’s apology or regret (Los Angeles Times).
• Which 1976 film was his last (IMDb biography).

The implication: the confirmed list and the disputed list overlap less than you’d expect. The facts are solid; the story around them is not.

The quotes that frame the legend

A few lines capture why Brynner’s image outlived his films.

“Now that I’m gone, I tell you: don’t smoke. Whatever you do, just don’t smoke.”

— Yul Brynner, anti-smoking public service announcement recorded before his death (IMDb biography)

“Yul Brynner, 65, Known for Role in ‘King and I.'”

— The New York Times obituary headline, October 11, 1985 (The New York Times)

“Exotic actor.”

— UPI’s description of Brynner in its 1985 obituary (UPI Archives)

The implication: Brynner understood that an exit line is a performance too — and he delivered one of the best in Hollywood history.

The lasting verdict on Yul Brynner

Brynner’s real achievement is that he made a controlled image feel like a natural truth. The shaved head, the regal voice, the invented origin story — all of it worked because he committed to it completely. His death from lung cancer belongs to a longer pattern of public figures facing cancer, from Brynner’s final PSA to Katherine LaNasa’s public cancer journey, and the pattern is consistent: a diagnosis becomes part of the story whether the star wants it or not. For fans of classic Hollywood, the choice is clear: respect the performances, but treat the biography as one more role Brynner played — or you’ll keep repeating a birth year the man himself may have changed.

Frequently asked questions

The FAQ answers stick to documented records; the disputed items are flagged rather than smoothed over.