Canadian actor whose reputation was transformed by his deadpan comic persona in Airplane! and the Naked Gun series
Few people watching the career of the tall, husky and fair-haired Leslie Nielsen, who has died aged 84, could have predicted that the stolid actor who specialised in authority figures would become known as a comedy star after two and a half decades in show business. His reputation was transformed by playing Dr Rumack on board the threatened airliner in Airplane! (1980) and Frank Drebin, the hilariously inept plain-clothes cop, in three Naked Gun films.
What the writer-directors Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker saw in Nielsen, silvery grey and in his mid-50s, was his previously po-faced persona. "They spotted me for being what I really was, a closet comedian," he said. "And how lucky can you get? It's like they said to me, 'Leslie, come out and play.' Thank God for them.
Few people watching the career of the tall, husky and fair-haired Leslie Nielsen, who has died aged 84, could have predicted that the stolid actor who specialised in authority figures would become known as a comedy star after two and a half decades in show business. His reputation was transformed by playing Dr Rumack on board the threatened airliner in Airplane! (1980) and Frank Drebin, the hilariously inept plain-clothes cop, in three Naked Gun films.
What the writer-directors Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker saw in Nielsen, silvery grey and in his mid-50s, was his previously po-faced persona. "They spotted me for being what I really was, a closet comedian," he said. "And how lucky can you get? It's like they said to me, 'Leslie, come out and play.' Thank God for them.
- 11/29/2010
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
Leslie Nielsen, who spent 30 years forging a career as a serious actor, and then another 30 playing the same parts for laughs, has died aged 84. We look back over his life in clips
Few actors have the ability to raise a smile just by the thought of them. Leslie Nielsen, deadpan extraordinaire, who used his training as a regular leading man in po-faced dramas to fruitfully spoof them for 30 years, was one of them. News of his death today will be greeted with both remembered happiness and a huge amount of sadness.
Nielsen was born in Saskatchewan, Canada, in 1926, 100 miles south of the Arctic Circle, the son of a mountie and a Welsh immigrant from Fulham. His older brother, Erik, was deputy prime minister of Canada during the 1980s, while their uncle, Jean Hersholt, was a prominent silent-film actor. Here, on David Letterman, promoting the second Naked Gun film, Nielsen credits...
Few actors have the ability to raise a smile just by the thought of them. Leslie Nielsen, deadpan extraordinaire, who used his training as a regular leading man in po-faced dramas to fruitfully spoof them for 30 years, was one of them. News of his death today will be greeted with both remembered happiness and a huge amount of sadness.
Nielsen was born in Saskatchewan, Canada, in 1926, 100 miles south of the Arctic Circle, the son of a mountie and a Welsh immigrant from Fulham. His older brother, Erik, was deputy prime minister of Canada during the 1980s, while their uncle, Jean Hersholt, was a prominent silent-film actor. Here, on David Letterman, promoting the second Naked Gun film, Nielsen credits...
- 11/29/2010
- by Catherine Shoard
- The Guardian - Film News
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