Edoropolis Emporium

Naked Gun star Leslie Nielsen has died at the age of 84 following a brief illness.

The comedy actor was taken to hospital in Florida two weeks ago after contracting pneumonia. His condition deteriorated in the last couple of days, and he passed away peacefully on Sunday evening.

His nephew Doug Nielsen said: "With his friends and his wife by his side, he just fell asleep and passed away. He was truly a nice man. A very caring, naturally funny guy in day-to-day life, not just because someone wrote something on paper for him."

Nielsen was born in Canada in 1926 and initially signed up to the air force, where he trained as a aerial gunner in the last years of the second world war.  After his period in service, he won a scholarship to an acting school in New York, so beginning his long career in film.

Though Nielsen is known the world over for his comic timing and deadpan delivery, he started out playing the straight and serious hero, in films such as cult sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet. He was also prolific on TV, appearing in numerous TV shows such as M*A*S*H, Hawaii Five-O and Columbo.

American film critic Roger Ebert once called him “the Laurence Olivier of spoofs”, and certainly, Nielsen found world-wide fame after appearing in mock disaster movie Airplane! This set the tone for the remainder of his career, and he went on to make the much-loved spoof cop series The Naked Gun, where he played incompetent law-enforcer Frank Drebin.

Nielsen continued to walk the spoof-route in the last few years of his life, appearing in the Scary Movie franchise and Dracula: Dead and Loving It. However, he will be most fondly remembered for his knowing looks to the camera, his slapstick fight-scenes and his silly one-liners that marked him out as a star in the 1980s.

He is survived by his wife Barbaree and his two daughters from a previous marriage. Surely, he will be missed. Just don't call him Shirley.