Profile of Leslie Nielsen on Famous Like Me

Leslie Nielsen, OC (born February 11, 1926 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada) is an actor and comedian.

Born of Danish and Welsh parentage, he studied at the Lorne Greene Academy of Radio Arts in Toronto before going to the United States.

Initially Nielsen was a serious dramatic actor, appearing in such 1950s films as the science fiction classic Forbidden Planet or as the ship's captain in 1972's The Poseidon Adventure (his singing of the theme song for The Swamp Fox notwithstanding). Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s he was a staple television guest star, appearing countless times as a doctor, lawyer, or police official, and even in his own brief series The Bold Ones. With his serious demeanor and serious silver-haired appearance, he immediately lent gravitas to any drama he was in.

It was this image that was comedically reversed in the 1980 film comedy Airplane!, so effectively that his career suddenly became one of starring in a succession of broad, kitchen sink comedies. These included Police Squad! and the subsequent The Naked Gun series and a large number of other spoofs and comedies. His movies have sent up disaster movies, hospital dramas, vampire and horror movies, action blockbusters, etc. He rarely played villains, but he did (as a violent "john"), for a change, in Nuts (a film based on an off-Broadway play) starring Oscar winners Barbra Streisand, Maureen Stapleton and Karl Malden.

He occasionally still performs serious roles on screen and stage (such as his one-man theatre show Darrow, playing Clarence Darrow), as well as providing voice-overs for commercials, cartoons (he stars as "Zeroman", whose lead character also resembles him), and children's shows, such as "Pumper Pups", which he narrates.

His brother, Erik Nielsen, is a former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada. The sibling relationship serves as the premise of an HBO mockumentary entitled The Canadian Conspiracy in which Leslie Nielsen appears, along with other prominent Canadian born media personalities.

Among his numerous awards, Leslie Nielsen has a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6541 Hollywood Blvd, and has been inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame. In 2002, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, although he is also a naturalized U.S. citizen.

Filmography

• Forbidden Planet (1956)
• Swamp Fox (1959-1961 TV series)
• Peyton Place (1965 TV series)
• The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
• Day of the Animals (1977)
• Airplane! (1980)
• Prom Night (1980)
• Spaceship (1981, retitled Naked Space)
• Police Squad! (1982)
• Creepshow (1982)
• The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
• Repossessed (1990)
• The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991)
• Surf Ninjas (1993)
• The Naked Gun 33â…“: The Final Insult (1994)
• Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995)
• Spy Hard (1996)
• Mr. Magoo (1997)
• Wrongfully Accused (1998)
• 2001: A Space Travesty (2000)
• Men with Brooms (2002)
• Scary Movie 3 (2003)

For the past decade Nielsen has been almost totally deaf and uses hearing aids to assist him during filming. He also lip reads and of late has resorted to using cue cards.

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