A movie icon turns 60 this year. This genuinely iconic figure has made appearances in both A and B-pictures and acted with some of the best names in the industry: Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert DeNiro, Nicolas Cage, Bruce Willis, Christopher Walken, Samuel L. Jackson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Nolte, Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan, Sylvester Stallone… the list goes on and on. Born in the Soviet Union immediately after the Second World War but more popular now than ever, this stellar performer’s full name is Автомат Калашникова образца 1947 … but is more commonly known as the AK-47.

You know the design – as distinctive as the Mont Blanc pen or a sleek Mercedes Benz. The AK-47 was created by Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov. Born of peasant stock in 1919, Kalashnikov was shamed as a child by his family’s exile to Siberia and vowed at an early age to make himself useful to the Motherland. As a tank commander during World War II, Kalashnikov was wounded in the October 1941 battle of Bryansk, in which a Red Army poorly equipped with single-shot rifles fell before German troops armed with automatic rifles. While recuperating in the hospital, Kalashnikov began to imagine a submachine gun with which his comrades could repel the invading Hun from their borders. The AK-47 was the result of several intense years of designing in state-financed workshops and took a top Soviet prize upon its completion in 1947. Manufactured by Izhevsk Mechanical Works, the AK-47 would become standard ordinance for the Soviet Army in 1950 and is celebrated (and feared) today as the best (most lethal) automatic assault weapon in the world. The design is so simple and intuitive that even a child can operate the thing. Awarded both the Stalin and Lenin prizes, its inventor became a national hero… but his country's applause fell on deaf ears, as Kalashnikov gave his hearing to perfect the killing machine that would forever bear his name.

While the Soviets armed the Viet Cong and Nicaraguan Sandinistas with the weapon, the United States sent AKs from China and Egypt to Afghanistan in the 1980s as a bulwark against Communism… and US troops are still ducking the ricochets. Marking the weapon’s 60^th birthday in The New York Times, columnist C. J. Chivers writes “Every self-respecting Communist revolutionary and even allies of convenience, from Fidel Castro to Yasir Arafat to Idi Amin, eventually had their Kalashnikov stockpiles and Kalashnikov poses, never mind the body counts.”

Like any Hollywood product, knockoffs proliferated from countries all over the world. The AK-47's original run was relatively short-lived and that original design has been updated numerous times in the intervening decades but the basic design remains unchanged… classic, you might say. The AK-47 and its variants were a primary weapon for at least one side in nearly all the wars of the last decade. For a time the Soviet Union’s key export, there are now ten times as many AK-47s in the world as there are American M-16s. Most commonly seen in Africa and the Middle East, AK-47s can be seen in such films as The Deer Hunter (1978), Under Fire (1983), Red Dawn (1984), Heartbreak Ridge (1986), Rambo III (1988), Last Action Hero (1993), True Lies (1994), Goldeneye (1995), Tears of the Sun, (2003), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), Lord of War (2005) and most recently in Blood Diamond (2006). In 1983, Sean Connery and Roger Moore wielded AK-47s as competing James Bonds in Never Say Never Again and Octopussy (Moore wins points for firing his while sliding down a marble balustrade). In Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown (1997), Samuel L. Jackson’s profane arms dealer paid the weapon its most quoted compliment: “AK-47… the very best there is. When you absolutely, positively got to kill every m*********-er in the room. Accept no substitutes.”

Love it or hate it, the AK-47 is here to stay.