Paul Gleason

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Paul Xavier Gleason (born May 4, 1939 in Jersey City , New Jersey , † May 27, 2006 in Burbank , California ) was an American actor .

biography

Paul Gleason achieved national fame as a football player at Florida State University from the late 1950s . After graduating in 1966, he was signed by the Cleveland Indians baseball team . Still, he turned away from professional sports and, like some of his Florida State University teammates, Burt Reynolds and Robert Urich , switched to acting entirely. The trigger for this was Elia Kazan's drama Fever in the Blood , which he and his friend, author Jack Kerouac , had seen in the cinema in 1961. Gleason then applied to Lee Strasberg's renowned Actors Studio and learned to be an actor there .

In a film and television career spanning over 40 years, Gleason has appeared in over 60 feature films and well over 70 television productions. Mostly Gleason embodied classic representatives of law and order in supporting roles, but at the same time they often appeared broken, corrupt or even malicious. He made his film debut in 1962, while still a student, with a small role as a gas station attendant in a panic in the year zero . However, Gleason's appearances were initially small. He had one of his first major roles in 1975 in the adventure film Doc Savage - The Bronze Man . In the 1980s his most famous film roles followed: In the Mark Twain- based comedy Die Glücksritter (1983) with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd , he played the seedy businessman Clarence Beeks ; in Bruce Willis ' action classic Die Hard (1988) he played the unhappy acting chief of police; in the Star Wars spin-off Ewoks - Kampf um Endor (1985) he played the role of Jeremitt Towani; and in the high school comedy Breakfast Club (1985) he was seen as an annoyed, overly strict teacher Richard Vernon . Gleason ridiculed his role in Breakfast Club in 2001 in the parody Not Another Teenage! .

A broad television audience in America, he was best known for his role as "David Thornton", which he played from 1976 to 1978 in the soap opera All My Children . Since the 1960s, he has also taken on guest roles in numerous television series such as Das A-Team , Columbo , Miami Vice , Seinfeld , Trio mit vier Fäusten and Friends . In other television series such as Another Life and One West Waikiki , the character actor also played recurring characters. In addition, he worked in numerous theater productions, including on New York's Broadway , and brought out a volume of his own poems. He worked as an actor until his death; Posthumously, three independent films starring Gleason were released up to 2011 .

On May 27, 2006, Paul Gleason died at the age of 67 of mesothelioma , a rare form of lung cancer most commonly associated with asbestos . In his youth he had worked for a time on a construction site where he came into contact with asbestos. The passionate golfer left behind his second wife Susan and two daughters.

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Commons : Paul Gleason  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Associated Press: Paul Gleason, 67, 'Breakfast Club' Actor, Is Dead . In: The New York Times . May 29, 2006, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed January 19, 2020]).
  2. ↑ a b 'Breakfast Club' Principal Gleason Dies. January 3, 2017, accessed January 19, 2020 .
  3. ^ Paul Gleason . May 29, 2006, ISSN  0307-1235 ( telegraph.co.uk [accessed January 19, 2020]).
personal data
SURNAME Gleason, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gleason, Paul Xavier
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-American actor
DATE OF BIRTH May 4, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Jersey City , New Jersey
DATE OF DEATH May 27, 2006
Place of death Burbank , California