Actor Leslie Nielsen dies aged 84

Leslie Nielsen’s career spanned 60 years, with Nielsen perhaps best known for his role as the gaffe-prone detective Frank Drebin in the Naked Gun comedies.

While well-known for pulling pranks off-screen, his first foray into spoof comedy saw him shoot to fame in 1980 with the release of Airplane!

As a doctor in Airplane! his deadpan delivery captivated the audience. As the pilots and passengers become violently ill, Nielsen says they must get to a hospital right away.

“A hospital? What is it?” a flight attendant asks, inquiring about the illness.

“It’s a big building with patients, but that’s not important right now,” Nielsen replies.

Tributes poured in for the Canadian actor, who died surrounded by family and friends at a hospital near his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

His agent John Kelly released a statement on his death, saying: “We are saddened by the passing of beloved actor Leslie Nielsen, probably best remembered as Lt. Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun series of pictures, but who enjoyed a more than 60-year career in motion pictures and television.”

On Twitter, classic Nielsen quotes were summoned in memory and as a tribute to the actor.

British actor Russell Brand led the tributes with a play off of Nielsen’s famous line: “RIP Leslie Nielsen. Shirley, he will be missed.”

Critics in the past argued that Nielsen was being typecast in comedies, but Nielsen insisted it was his intention all along.

“I’ve always been cast against type before,” he said of his early years in Hollywood.

King of the deadpan delivery: your favourite Nielsen quotes

From Channel 4 News' Facebook fans:

@Colin Taylor ?"Cigarette?" "Yes, I know." Brilliant.

@Jeremy Free ?"Surely you can't be serious!" "I am serious...and don't call me Shirley."

@Jay Ellis "We're sorry to bother you at such a time like this, Mrs. Twice. We would have come earlier, but your husband wasn't dead then."

From Channel 4 News' Twitter fans:

@ajit8uk 'A white guy, tall with a moustache, about 6 foot 3' ... 'That's an awfully big moustache'

@JohnMeadowcroft Naked Gun - 'She had legs you could suck on for a day.'

@SeanMcP I was in a blimp. Goodyear? No, the worst.

@jonsanhoi Leslie Nielsen: Don't move. I've got a gun. Not here, but I got one. (from Wrongfully Accused, 1998)

Nielsen arrived in Hollywood in the mid-1950s after performing in 150 live television dramas in New York. Nielsen first performed as the king of France in the Paramount operetta The Vagabond King with Kathryn Grayson.

The film – he called it “The Vagabond Turkey” – flopped, but MGM signed him to a seven-year contract.

His first film for that studio was auspicious – as the space ship commander in the science fiction classic Forbidden Planet. He found his best dramatic role as the captain of an overturned ocean liner in the 1972 disaster movie, The Poseidon Adventure.

He played Debbie Reynolds’ sweetheart in 1957’s popular Tammy and the Bachelor, and he became well known to baby boomers for his role as the Revolutionary War fighter Francis Marion in the Disney TV adventure series The Swamp Fox.

He asked to be released from his contract at MGM, and as a freelancer, he appeared in a series of undistinguished movies.

“I played a lot of leaders, autocratic sorts; perhaps it was my Canadian accent,” he said.

Airplane!

Then Airplane! captivated audiences and changed everything.

Producers-directors-writers Jim Abrahams, David and Jerry Zucker had hired Robert Stack, Peter Graves, Lloyd Bridges and Nielsen to spoof their heroic TV images in a satire of flight-in-jeopardy movies.

After the movie’s success, the film-making trio cast their newfound comic star as Detective Drebin in a TV series, Police Squad, which trashed the cliches of Dragnet and other cop shows. Despite good reviews, ABC cancelled it after just six episodes.

“It didn’t belong on TV,” Nielsen later said. “It had the kind of humour you had to pay attention to.”

The Zuckers and Abraham converted the series into a feature film – The Naked Gun – with George Kennedy, O.J. Simpson and Priscilla Presley as Nielsen’s co-stars. Its huge success led to sequels – The Naked Gun 2 1/2 and The Naked Gun 33 1/3.

His later movies included All I Want for Christmas, Dracula: Dead and Loving It and Spy Hard.

Between films he often turned serious, touring with his one-man show on the life of the great defence lawyer, Clarence Darrow.

Leslie Nielsen's early life 

Born on February 11, 1926 in Regina, Saskatchewan, Nielsen grew up 200 miles south of the Arctic Circle at Fort Norman, where his father was an officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. 

One of three sons, Nielsen once recalled, "There were 15 people in the village, including five of us. If my father arrested somebody in the winter, he'd have to wait until the thaw to turn him in."

Nielsen Snr was a troubled man who beat his wife and sons, and Leslie longed to escape. 

As soon as he graduated from high school at 17, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, even though he was legally deaf (he wore hearing aids most of his life). 

After the war, Nielsen worked as a disc jockey at a Calgary radio station, then studied at a Toronto radio school operated by Lorne Greene, who would go on to star on the hit TV series "Bonanza." 

A scholarship to the Neighborhood Playhouse brought him to New York, where he immersed himself in live television.

Nielsen was married to: Monica Boyer, 1950-1955; Sandy Ullman, 1958-74; and Brooks Oliver, 1981-85. Nielsen and his second wife had two daughters, Thea and Maura.