\n<\/p>\n
Before O.J. Simpson became synonymous with the sensational murder trial that riveted the nation in the mid-1990s, he was a football star turned Hollywood fixture who played roles as varied as an astronaut<\/a>, a comic detective<\/a> and a fake priest<\/a>.<\/p>\n His acting career began while he was still a star running back. As Simpson, who died<\/a> on Wednesday, told it, he was waiting out the best deal he could get in the N.F.L. when producers reached out to him asking if he could act. \u201cSure, I can try to act,\u201d he replied.<\/p>\n He scored bit parts in a medical series and a western, but the allure of an onscreen career didn\u2019t grab him until his first major film, \u201cThe Klansman\u201d<\/a> (1974), in which he appeared alongside Richard Burton and Lee Marvin, playing a man seeking to avenge his friend\u2019s death at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Simpson told Johnny Carson in an interview<\/a> in 1979 on \u201cThe Tonight Show\u201d that during the production, the actors were casually chatting about food when Elizabeth Taylor said the best chili she\u2019d had was at a restaurant called Chasen\u2019s in West Hollywood.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cSomebody made a call, and in an hour and a half they had a private jet bring a pot of chili from Chasen\u2019s to Oroville, Calif.,\u201d Simpson said in the interview. \u201cTwo hours later we\u2019re eating chili and I\u2019m saying, \u2018I like this life.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Simpson became part of a tradition of professional football players who forged second careers in Hollywood: The famed fullback Jim Brown<\/a> began acting in the 1960s, and Carl Weathers<\/a> appeared in \u201cRocky\u201d shortly after retiring from the sport.<\/p>\n Some of Simpson\u2019s most memorable roles came during his football career, including appearances in the mini-series \u201cRoots,\u201d the disaster movie \u201cThe Towering Inferno\u201d and the space-program thriller \u201cCapricorn One.\u201d<\/p>\n He acknowledged that he was a less-than-seasoned actor, and filmmakers weren\u2019t always thrilled to have him on board.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cMy reaction was less than enthusiastic,\u201d Peter Hyams, the director of \u201cCapricorn One,\u201d said in the 2016 documentary series \u201cO.J.: Made in America,\u201d<\/a> explaining that he thought there were other more experienced actors who would have been better for the role.<\/p>\n As Simpson\u2019s football career wound down at the end of the 1970s, he doubled down on acting. He formed his own production company, Orenthal Productions, which was involved in a number of made-for-television movies starring Simpson \u2014 including as a boxer who becomes a kind of guardian for the daughter of a dead heavyweight (\u201cGoldie and the Boxer\u201d), a private investigator who becomes embroiled in a smuggling operation (\u201cCocaine and Blue Eyes\u201d), and the driver of a tour bus that gets hijacked by kidnappers (\u201cDetour to Terror\u201d).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In \u201cThe Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!\u201d (1988) and its sequels, he starred opposite Leslie Nielsen as a comically unlucky, oft-injured detective. The films gave Simpson plenty of opportunities for physical comedy, in one instance launching<\/a> him from a wheelchair onto a baseball field.<\/p>\n And yet the glamour of Hollywood, where he was far from a top-tier player, did not always match up to his high-flying N.F.L. career, in which he was unquestionably A-list.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In an interview<\/a> in the 1980s Simpson said that football had a clarity and an immediate satisfaction that film work lacked, saying, \u201cThere was a winner and a loser right when the game was over.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWhen it\u2019s over, you did a good job or you didn\u2019t do a good job,\u201d he went on. \u201cNow, you know what, all this work I\u2019m doing today in this heat and this wind, I got to wait for some schmuck to review the show and tell me if I was good or not.\u201d<\/p>\n He seemed to recognize his limits, once saying, \u201cNo matter how many acting lessons I took, the public just wouldn\u2019t buy me as Othello.\u201d<\/p>\n Simpson had recently filmed a television pilot for NBC called \u201cFrogmen,\u201d about a team of Navy SEALs, when his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald L. Goldman, were found brutally murdered in 1994 in Los Angeles, transforming Simpson from a star to a murder suspect whose televised trial would reach a wider audience than his network shows or films.<\/p>\n \u201cFrogmen\u201d<\/a> never aired, but it became a topic of discussion in the trial. One of the detectives who investigated the case testified<\/a> that while searching Simpson\u2019s home, he seized videotape from the TV pilot because the police had information that Simpson had been trained during that performance to use a knife \u201cas a stabbing or killing instrument.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The trial effectively ended his Hollywood career. Simpson was acquitted on murder charges, but was later found civilly liable for the deaths of Brown Simpson and Goldman.<\/p>\n Nearly a decade after the civil verdict in 1997, Simpson appeared in a more obscure, more bizarre role: as the host of a prank show called \u201cJuiced,\u201d in which he would work at a fast-food drive-in or dress up as a homeless man, employing the catchphrase, \u201cYou\u2019ve been juiced!\u201d It was broadcast on Pay Per View and ended up on DVD.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n