Even before the murder trial of the century became synonymous with his name, O.J. Simpson was known as a football legend and natural talent in front of the cameras.
Orental James Simpson passed away on Wednesday, April 10th after a battle with cancer, his family announced online. He was 76 years old.
Simpson achieved fame and fortune as a legendary athlete with Hollywood knocking on his door for his glamorous persona, but the 1994 murders of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman Simpson's legacy changed forever.
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O.J. Simpson turned his football career into a Hollywood career. (Getty Images)
After attending the University of Southern California, where he won the Heisman Trophy in 1968, Simpson was the first player selected in the 1969 NFL Draft. Widely regarded as one of the best running backs in NFL history, Simpson won the NFL Player of the Year award multiple times and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1985.
His acting career began while playing for the USC Trojans and had uncredited appearances in “Dragnet,'' “The Name of the Game,'' and “Ironside.'' .
While still a baseball player, Simpson made his screen debut in the 1974 film The Clansman, co-starring Richard Burton and Lee Marvin.
OJ made his film debut in “The Clansman,'' co-starring Richard Burton. (Bettman Archive via Getty Images)
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Although the film was not a success, it helped Simpson establish his name in the acting world. He went on to appear in The Towering Inferno, Cassandra Crossing, Killer Force, and the 1977 television miniseries Roots.
Simpson became the face of the Hertz rental car company and turned the advertising world upside down. His slogan is “Go, OJ, Go!” He helped raise brand awareness and become a star in his own right.
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His love of film and television helped him form his own production company, Orensal Productions, in 1979, where he produced television movies, including his own “Goldie and the Boxer.” Simpson was fascinated by the industry and set his sights on film's most coveted awards.
Simpson played Kadi Touray on Roots. (Getty Images)
O.J. Simpson co-stars with LeVar Burton in “Roots.” (ABC Photo Archive/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images)
“Winning an Oscar or an Emmy. I always put my fantasies in the realm of goals,” Simpson told the Los Angeles Times in 1980. I definitely want to have it. ”
O.J. Simpson's connection to the Kardashian family began before the murder trial and had a lasting impact on the family
He then starred in “Detour to Terror,'' “Cocaine and Blue Eyes,'' “Hambone and Hilly,'' and then barely got a chance to become “The Terminator.''
Director James Cameron and Mike Medavoy, co-founder of Orion Pictures, which distributed the film, were looking for the right person to play resistance fighter Kyle Reese, choosing between Simpson and the then-relatively unknown Arnold Schwarzenegger. I arrived.
Simpson co-presented with Marisa Berenson at the 48th Academy Awards. (ABC Photo Archives)
“I heard from Mike Medavoy that the entire cast for this movie was set,” Cameron said in Schwarzenegger's Netflix documentary series “Arnold.” “Everything went well. O.J. Simpson and Arnold. “Schwarzenegger,” he recalled.
“I said, 'So which one is which?' Those two names sounded so wrong to me.”
Schwarzenegger recalled that “no one” believed that Simpson could play a killer robot in Orion. “In our conversations, it became clear that no one was crazy about O.J. Simpson playing the Terminator because he couldn't sell as a killing machine,” he said. Ta.
O.J. Simpson poses with Gilda Radner and Jane Curtin before co-hosting NBC's “Saturday Night Live” on February 24, 1978. (Bettman Archive via Getty Images)
Simpson co-starred with Elizabeth Montgomery in “A Killing Affair.” (Getty Images)
For years, Schwarzenegger claimed to have had a Terminator painting with Arnold's face in Simpson's home office, which he attributed to Cameron. James debunked this theory in 2019 while promoting Terminator: New Fate.
“Arnold is literally wrong,” he told the LA Times. “I know it's hard to imagine, but I wouldn't argue with Arnold.”
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He added, “I didn't draw the picture for him. We drew a picture of him as the Terminator for the production. There is no OJ underneath that picture.” he added.
Instead, OJ dove headfirst into the world of comedy with the 1988 classic “The Naked Gun: From the Files of the Police Squad.”
Watch: The Controversial Life of OJ Simpson
Simpson played a detective. Nordberg from the crime parody film series. (Paramount)
Simpson played a detective. Nordberg is a crime parody film starring Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, and Ricardo Montalban. He reprized his role in the 1991 sequel The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Scent of Fear and the 1994 hit The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Last Insult.
His last television movie, The Frogmen, was never broadcast.
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Simpson was 46 years old when he was arrested in June 1994 for the murders of his ex-wife and her friend Ron Goldman.
He pleaded not guilty and was found not guilty of the double murder after an 11-month trial. The trial was considered the “trial of the century” at the time due to the high amount of media attention it received.
O.J. Simpson and Nicole Brown Simpson were married for seven years before divorcing in 1992. Nicole was murdered in 1994. (Vinny Zufante/Getty Images)
Three years later, he was found liable in a wrongful death lawsuit and ordered to pay $33.5 million to relatives of the murder victim's family.
Decades before she assisted in the trial, Ms. Simpson had cornered the late late Hollywood lawyer Robert Kardashian, but their friendship ended when Mr. Simpson was acquitted.
On October 3, 2008, 15 years after he was acquitted of murdering his ex-wife and Ron Goldman, Simpson convicted of 12 feloniesKidnappings and armed robberies stemming from the Las Vegas incident the previous year.
He was sentenced to 33 years in prison and served nine years before being paroled in October 2017.
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