Leslie Nielsen

Leslie William Nielsen was born February 11, 1926, and started acting in 1950, appearing in 46 live television programs that first year alone. His film debut came in 1956 with Forbidden Planet, and through the next two decades he built a reputation in dramas, westerns, and romances - roles in films like The Poseidon Adventure in 1972 cemented him as a serious actor. Then in 1980, Airplane! recast him as oblivious comic relief, and the fit was so perfect that Roger Ebert later called him "the Olivier of spoofs." He ran with it: the short-lived Police Squad! in 1982 became the blueprint for The Naked Gun film series, and Nielsen spent his final decades specializing in characters complicit in their own absurdity. He was inducted onto Canada's Walk of Fame and the Hollywood Walk of Fame, named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2001, and died November 28, 2010, after 60 years and more than 220 characters across film and television.