"Get your dirty paws off me … "

Oscar-winning actor, filmmaker, U.S. Army veteran, and outspoken, often controversial, National Rifle Association spokesman Charlton Heston died last week. He was 83.

You can call me crazy, but my favorite Heston film role wasn’t as the title character in “Ben-Hur” (1959). Or as Moses in “The Ten Commandments” (1956). Or even his heroic turns in the ’70s-period science-fiction films “Soylent Green” or “The Omega Man,” which you might suspect would suit my pretty peculiar movie tastes.

No, it’s in “Planet of the Apes,” the 1968 hit in which he played a time-displaced astronaut who finds himself on a planet where humans have been subjugated by walking, talking apes. (He later parodied that by playing an ape in Tim Burton’s 2001 “remake/re-imagining” of the whole concept.)

A close runner-up would be Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil,” a 1958 thriller in which Heston is seemingly, badly miscast as a Mexican policeman. And yet, it works, thanks to his forceful performance. I’m also fond of his supporting role as the villainous Cardinal Richlieu in the ’70s version of “The Three Musketeers.”

By the way, Heston supposedly said his favorite of his films was another 1968 film, the underappreciated Western “Will Penny.”

What are your favorite Charlton Heston movies and roles?