Actor Leslie Nielsen is dead

Canadian actor Leslie Nielsen, star of Comedy Naked Gun, died Sunday in a hospital in Florida at the age of 84. Hospitalized for twelve days for lung problems, he saw his condition worsened over the last forty-eight hours, said a family member of a Canadian radio.

Born in 1926 in Saskatchewan, the son of a police officer had made up his military service in the Air Force before studying acting in Toronto and New York.

Leslie Nielsen had become known through his appearances in television series such as American success Peyton Place, Dr. Kildare, The Fugitive. He gained international fame thanks to some cult films like  Airplane! (1980).
A typically serious early role was as the spaceship commander in "Forbidden Planet, " the 1956 science-fiction classic. "It's the reason I was never asked to do 'Star Trek' or 'Twilight Zone' for TV," he told the Toronto Star in 2002. "I carried too much baggage with me from that movie."

Nielsen played Debbie Reynolds' sweetheart in the 1957 film "Tammy and the Bachelor," was the Revolutionary War fighter Francis Marion in the Disney TV adventure series "The Swamp Fox" and had roles in such TV series as "The New Breed" and "Bracken's World."

"I just always worked," he said. "I played a lot of leaders, autocratic sorts. Perhaps it was my Canadian accent."

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