Leslie Nielsen Biography

Leslie Nielsen spent his early childhood in the isolated Yukon Territories, where his father was a Mountie. After graduation, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force near the end of the Second World War and served for a year as an aerial gunner. After his service, he found work as a disc jockey at a Calgary radio station, where he realised his talent for show business.

Nielsen studied at the Lorne Greene Academy of Radio Arts in Toronto, before going to the United States, where joined the Neighbourhood Playhouse in New York City. There, he took lessons in theatre and music, and performed, until he landed his first television role, in an episode of Studio One.

His first film was Paramount’s The Vagabond King. Initially a serious dramatic actor, whose breakthrough role was in the 1950s science fiction classic, Forbidden Planet, Nielsen’s career shifted as he starred in a succession of comedies. His successes include The Naked Gun series, Airplane!, Dracula - Dead and Loving It, and a number of other spoofs and comedies.

Nielsen had his own hit TV series when he starred as Frank Drebin in Police Squad, which earned him an Emmy nomination in 1982. He would go on to play the clueless detective three more times on the big screen, in the popular cop show parody The Naked Gun, and its sequels. He received UCLA's Jack Benny Award for his comedic talents in 1995.

Nielsen claimed to have appeared in over 1,500 television programmes. His early television appearances include parts in Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Virginian, and Wild, Wild West. His first leading role in a TV series was as American Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion in Disney’s The Swamp Fox, a spin-off of the Davy Crockett series, it also featured his singing of the theme song. In 1961, he was the lead in a taut L.A. police drama called The New Breed.

In 1968, he had a major role in the pilot movie for the popular police series Hawaii Five-O. In 1969, he had the leading role as a police officer in The Bold Ones: The Protectors. Nielsen also starred in the by William Girdler directed 1977 cult-classic Project: Kill.

Leslie was married and divorced three times, and has two children from his second marriage. He died while being treated for pneumonia in hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on 28 November 2010.