Canadian-American movie and TV actor who by 1989 had credits of 39 successful years of acting, including more than 50 movies and close to 1,500 TV shows. Launching himself as a comic in the 1980s he starred in hilarious spoofs such as “Airplane!” and “Police Squad” and is best known for his portrayal of the outrageous bungling cop, Lt. Frank Drebin, in “The Naked Gun,” 1988. He was awarded a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.
One of three sons of Ingvard Nielsen, a Royal Canadian Mountie, and mom Maybell, the boy spent his childhood in the isolation of Fort Norman, a tiny trading-post type village just 100 miles below the Arctic Circle. His father had been hired to protect the 15 people who lived there. When his two older brothers became of school age, they moved to Edmonton, Alberta and for the first time, had a home with indoor plumbing.
A childhood case of rickets left his legs bowed at the ankles and briefly darkened his dream of being an actor. His dad, bright and thoughtful in public, was a disciplinarian and a violent man to the family. His dad used to hit his mom but one night when he was punishing Nielsen and his brothers, he accidentally hit his own leg with his strap. Realizing how hard he hit himself, he never hit the kids again.
When Leslie was 17, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force after graduating from Victoria High School. His brother Erik is a military policeman in the Yukon.
When he was discharged he got a job at a Calgary radio station as an engineer, announcer and DJ before heading to Toronto to study acting at Lorne Greene’s Academy of Radio Arts. He then won a scholarship to the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, studied dance under Martha Graham and did summer stock.
He broke into TV on “Studio One” in 1949. The next year he was in 46 TV shows, usually playing authority figures, and in 1954 moved to Los Angeles to make “Forbidden Planet” with Walter Pidgeon. He also appeared in “Tammy and the Bachelor,” 1957 and “The Poseidon Adventure,” 1972. His TV series include “The New Breed,” 1961-’62, “Peyton Place,” 1965, “The Protectors,” 1969-’70, “Bracken’s World,” 1970″ and Police Squad,” 1982. “Naked Gun,” came in 1988 followed by “Naked Gun 2 1/2,” 1991.
Nielsen’s autobiography, “The Naked Truth,” 1993, written in collaboration with David Fisher is a highly fictional account of his life where “everything is true except the facts.” Often mistaken for other actors such as Lloyd Bridges, Robert Stack, Peter Graves and sometimes George Peppard, Nielsen became the hottest non-name in all showbiz. Everywhere he goes he gets recognized – as the wrong person.
He married unsuccessfully three times. He wed singer Monica Boyer in 1950, divorced in 1959. In 1958 he married executive secretary, Sandy Ullman, and had two daughters, Thea and Maura. The marriage ended after 16 years in 1974. In 1981 he married Brooks Oliver, a younger woman, but it ended in 1983. As of 1994 he was living with Barbaree Earl and remains friends with ex-wife Sandy.
Nielsen has a degenerative hearing loss that requires him to wear two hearing aids but it doesn’t slow him down. He is known as an avid prankster in private life, and is a 19-handicap golfer. He released a comedy video, “Bad Golf Made Easier,” in 1993 and continued his golf gags in a second video “Bad Golf My Way,” 1994.
Suffering from pneumonia, Nielsen died November 28, 2010 in a Fort Lauderdale, FL hospital.
Link to Wikipedia biography