AP Photo/Dan SteinbergIn life, Charlton Heston was undeniably polarizing. His death, however, turned out to be quite the bipartisan affair.
Famous faces from both ends of the political spectrum turned up to honor the late great actor at his Los Angeles-area funeral Saturday, where roughly 300 people, among them politicians, actors and family members, turned up to pay their respects.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a onetime costar and protégé of Heston, and former first lady Nancy Reagan—escorted by Heston's former National Rifle Association colleague Tom Selleck—were among the mourners in attendance at the nearly two-hour memorial.
Oliver Stone, who did not share Heston's political views, but who directed Heston in Any Given Sunday, attended, as did liberal campaigner Rob Reiner, who directed the 1997 documentary I Am Your Child, for which Heston lent his gravitas.
Pat Boone, who worked with Heston on The Greatest Story Ever Told, Olivia de Havilland and Keith Carradine also turned up to the Episcopal Parish of St. Matthew, located in the Pacific Palisades and where Heston regularly worshipped.
Mourners were seated in a semicircle, while those closest to the Ten Commandments legend, including son Fraser Clarke Heston and daughter Holly Heston Rochell, paid their respects.
"I never knew a finer man; I will never know a finer man," his son said during the service, adding that Heston, a patriot to the end, "loved his country."
His daughter, meanwhile, paid tribute to her father's love of tennis and poetry, reciting Shakespeare and Tennyson.
The Oscar-winning Ben-Hur thesp died at age 84 in his Beverly Hills home on April 5 with his wife, Lydia, by his side. He had been battling Alzheimer's disease for years, disclosing his condition to the public in 2002.