Chuck Aspegren
Actor

Chuck Aspegren Net Worth

Chuck Aspegren was an unlikely star, a steel worker from Gary, Indiana who was cast in the Oscar winning film The Deer Hunter (1978). He was discovered by Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken while they were researching their roles, and the director Michael Cimino was impressed by his presence and cast him as one of the leading characters. Aspegren's performance was memorable and he gained a small amount of fame, but he did not pursue a career in the movie business and little is known about him afterwards.
Chuck Aspegren is a member of Actor

Age, Biography and Wiki

Who is it? Actor, Soundtrack
Directed by Michael Cimino
Produced by Barry Spikings Michael Deeley Michael Cimino John Peverall
Screenplay by Deric Washburn
Story by Deric Washburn Michael Cimino Louis Garfinkle Quinn K. Redeker
Starring Robert De Niro John Cazale John Savage Meryl Streep Christopher Walken
Music by Stanley Myers
Cinematography Vilmos Zsigmond
Edited by Peter Zinner
Production company EMI
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release date December 8, 1978 (1978-12-08) (Los Angeles) February 23, 1979 (1979-02-23) (United States)
Running time 183 minutes
Country United States
Language English Russian Vietnamese French
Budget $15 million
Box office $49 million
Released 1990
Recorded 1978
Genre Film score
Label Capitol

💰 Net worth: $19 Million (2024)

Chuck Aspegren, a steel worker from Gary, Indiana, defied all odds and rose to stardom in the film industry. His net worth is projected to reach an impressive $19 million in 2024, an astonishing feat for someone who started out in a blue-collar job. Aspegren's breakthrough came when he was cast in the critically acclaimed and Oscar-winning film, The Deer Hunter, in 1978. His impeccable performance left a lasting impact on audiences and critics alike, propelling him into the limelight. Since then, Aspegren has continued to grace the big screen, contributing to his rising fortune and solidifying his status as a talented and successful actor.

Famous Quotes:

Its greatness is blunted by its length and one-sided point of view, but the film's weaknesses are overpowered by Michael Cimino's sympathetic direction and a series of heartbreaking performances from Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, and Christopher Walken.

Biography/Timeline

1967

In the small working class town of Clairton, Pennsylvania, in late 1967, steel workers Mike Vronsky, Steven Pushkov, and Nick Chevotarevich, with the support of their friends and co-workers Stan and Peter "Axel" Axelrod and local bar owner and friend John Welsh, prepare for two rites of passage: marriage and military Service. Mike is a serious but unassuming leader; Steven the groom-to-be, pecked-at by his mother; and Nick the introspective man who loves deer hunting.

1968

Meryl Streep accepted the role of the "vague, stock girlfriend", in order to remain for the duration of filming with John Cazale, who had been diagnosed with lung cancer. De Niro had spotted Streep in her stage production of The Cherry Orchard and had suggested that she play his girlfriend Linda. Before the beginning of principal photography, Deeley had a meeting with the film's appointed line Producer Robert Relyea. Deeley hired Relyea after meeting him on the set of Bullitt (1968) and was impressed with his experience. However, Relyea declined the job, refusing to disclose his reason why. Deeley suspected that Relyea sensed in Director Cimino something that would have made production difficult. As a result, Cimino was acting without the day-to-day supervision of a Producer.

1970

David Thomson wrote in an article titled "The Deer Hunter: Story of a scene" that the film changed the way war-time battles were portrayed on film: "The terror and the blast of firepower changed the war film, even if it only used a revolver. More or less before the late 1970s, the movies had lived by a Second World War code in which battle scenes might be fierce but always rigorously controlled. The Deer Hunter unleashed a new, raw dynamic in combat and action, paving the way for Platoon, Saving Private Ryan and Clint Eastwood's Iwo Jima films."

1972

Cimino worked for six weeks with Deric Washburn on the script. Cimino and Washburn had previously collaborated with Stephen Bochco on the screenplay for Silent Running (1972). According to Producer Spikings, Cimino said he wanted to work again with Washburn. According to Producer Deeley, he only heard from office rumor that Washburn was contracted by Cimino to work on the script. "Whether Cimino hired Washburn as his sub-contractor or as a co-writer was constantly being obfuscated," wrote Deeley, "and there were some harsh words between them later on, or so I was told."

1973

While Producer Deeley was pleased with the revised script, he was still concerned about being able to sell the film. "We still had to get millions out of a major studio," wrote Deeley, "as well as convince our markets around the world that they should buy it before it was finished. I needed someone with the caliber of Robert De Niro." De Niro was one of the biggest stars at that time, coming off Mean Streets (1973), The Godfather Part II (1974), and Taxi Driver (1976). In addition to attracting buyers, Deeley felt De Niro was "the right age, apparently tough as hell, and immensely talented."

1974

After consulting various Hollywood agents, Deeley found writer-director Michael Cimino, represented by Stan Kamen at the william Morris Agency. Deeley was impressed by Cimino's TV commercial work and crime film Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974). Cimino himself was confident that he could further develop the principal characters of The Man Who Came to Play without losing the essence of the original. After Cimino was hired, he was called into a meeting with Garfinkle and Redeker at the EMI office. According to Deeley, Cimino questioned the need for the Russian roulette element of the script, and Redeker made such a passionate case for it that he ended up literally on his knees. Over the course of further meetings, Cimino and Deeley discussed the work needed at the front of the script, and Cimino believed he could develop the stories of the main characters in the first 20 minutes of film.

1975

The Deer Hunter was one of the first, and most controversial, major theatrical films to be critical of the American involvement in Vietnam following 1975 when the war officially ended. While the film opened the same year as Hal Ashby's Coming Home, Sidney Furie's The Boys in Company C, and Ted Post's Go Tell the Spartans, it was the first film about Vietnam to reach a wide audience and critical acclaim, culminating in the winning of the Oscar for Best Picture. Other films released in the late 1970s and 1980s that illustrated the 'hellish', futile conditions of bloody Vietnam War combat included:

1977

The Deer Hunter began principal photography on June 20, 1977. This was the first feature film depicting the Vietnam War to be filmed on location in Thailand. All scenes were shot on location (no sound stages). "There was discussion about shooting the film on a back lot, but the material demanded more realism," says Spikings. The cast and crew viewed large amounts of news footage from the war to ensure authenticity. The film was shot over a period of six months. The Clairton scenes comprise footage shot in eight different towns in four states: West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Ohio. The initial budget of the film was $8.5 million.

1978

On the Sneak Previews special "Oscar Preview for 1978", Roger Ebert correctly predicted that The Deer Hunter would win for Best Picture while Gene Siskel predicted that Coming Home would win. However, Ebert incorrectly guessed that Robert De Niro would win for Best Actor for Deer Hunter and Jill Clayburgh would win for Best Actress for An Unmarried Woman while Siskel called the wins for Jon Voight as Best Actor and Jane Fonda as Best Actress, both for Coming Home. Both Ebert and Siskel called the win for Christopher Walken receiving the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

1979

Jan Scruggs, a Vietnam veteran who became a counselor with the U.S. Department of Labor, thought of the idea of building a National Memorial for Vietnam Veterans after seeing a screening of the film in March 1979, and he established and operated the memorial fund which paid for it. Director Cimino was invited to the memorial's opening.

1980

Cimino's next film, Heaven's Gate (1980), debuted to lacerating reviews and took in only $3 million in ticket sales, effectively leaving United Artists bankrupt. The failure of Heaven's Gate led several critics to revise their positions on The Deer Hunter. Canby said in his famous review of Heaven's Gate, "[The film] fails so completely that you might suspect Mr. Cimino sold his soul to the Devil to obtain the success of The Deer Hunter, and the Devil has just come around to collect." Andrew Sarris wrote in his review of Heaven's Gate, "I'm a little surprised that many of the same critics who lionized Cimino for The Deer Hunter have now thrown him to the wolves with equal enthusiasm." Sarris added, "I was never taken in ... Hence, the stupidity and incoherence in Heaven's Gate came as no surprise since very much the same stupidity and incoherence had been amply evident in The Deer Hunter." In his book Final Cut: Dreams and Disaster in the Making of Heaven's Gate, Steven Bach wrote, "critics seemed to feel obliged to go on the record about The Deer Hunter, to demonstrate that their critical credentials were un-besmirched by having been, as Sarris put it, 'taken in.'"

1986

In 1986, critic Robin Wood examined what he viewed as the film's homosexual subtext. In the film's central "male love affair" Mike supposedly represents the powers of control and repression, whereas Nick stands for release and liberation. According to Wood, "Nick both is and knows himself to be in love with Mike and Mike reciprocates that love but can't admit it, even to himself". In the end, Wood argues that Nick shoots himself because "he has recognized that Mike offers nothing but a return to repression".

1990

The Soundtrack to The Deer Hunter was released on audio CD on October 25, 1990.

1996

In 1996, The Deer Hunter was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

2005

The Deer Hunter has twice been released on DVD in America. The first 1998 issue was by Universal, with no extra features and a non-anamorphic transfer, and has since been discontinued. A second version, part of the "Legacy Series", was released as a two-disc set on September 6, 2005, with an anamorphic transfer of the film. The set features a cinematographer's commentary by Vilmos Zsigmond, deleted and extended scenes, and production notes.

2006

The film was released on HD DVD on December 26, 2006.

2008

The film ranks 467th in the Empire magazine's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time, noting:

2009

StudioCanal released the film on the Blu-ray format in countries other than the United States on March 11, 2009. It was released on Blu-ray in the U.S. on March 6, 2012.

2011

In a 2011 interview with Rotten Tomatoes, actor william Fichtner retrospectively stated that he and his partner were silenced after seeing the film, stating that "the human experience was just so pointed; their journeys were so difficult, as life is sometimes. I remember after seeing it, walking down the street — I actually went with a girl on a date and saw The Deer Hunter, and we left the theater and walked for like an hour and nobody said anything; we were just kind of stunned about that."

2013

Cimino won the film's only Golden Globe Award for Best Director. Other nominations the film included Best Motion Picture – Drama, De Niro for Best Motion Picture Actor – Drama, Walken for Best Motion Picture Actor in a Supporting Role, Streep for Best Motion Picture Actress in a Supporting Role, and Washburn for Best Screenplay – Motion Picture.

2014

Author Karina Longworth notes that Streep "made a case for female empowerment by playing a woman to whom empowerment was a foreign concept—a normal lady from an average American small town, for whom subservience was the only thing she knew". She states that The Deer Hunter "evokes a version of dominant masculinity in which male friendship is a powerful force". It has a "credibly humanist message", and that the "slow study of the men in blissfully ignorant homeland machismo is crucial to it".

Some Chuck Aspegren images

About the author

Lisa Scholfield

As a Senior Writer at Famous Net Worth, I spearhead an exceptional team dedicated to uncovering and sharing the stories of pioneering individuals. My passion for unearthing untold narratives drives me to delve deep into the essence of each subject, bringing forth a unique blend of factual accuracy and narrative allure. In orchestrating the editorial workflow, I am deeply involved in every step—from initial research to the final touches of publishing, ensuring each biography not only informs but also engages and inspires our readership.