Happy 76th Birthday to Acting Legend Lee Majors!
One of the most iconic Television actors of all time Lee Majors turns 76 today. While many of us know him from ‘The Million Dollar Man‘ as well as ‘The Fall Guy‘, don’t forget he also is the voice of ‘General Hawk‘ in the G.I.Joe series ‘G.I.Joe Renegades‘. Check the highlights of Lee Majors Career below, and share your thoughts after the JUMP!
(Source: biography.com)
Happy birthday to the Six Million Dollar Man! Lee Majors turns 75 today, and if you only think of him as bionic astronaut Steve Austin or stuntman-slash-bounty-hunter Colt Seavers from The Fall Guy, you’re out of date. He’s still working up a storm, with at least seven projects on his roster for 2015. The man keeps busy.
He credits his excellent work ethic, which he says was given to him by Barbara Stanwyck. She took him under her wing when they worked together on his first TV series, The Big Valley, and he took all of her advice to heart. There’s one piece of advice he didn’t take, though: during test scenes for the show, director Arnold Laven told him, “You’ll never make it in the business unless you learn to leave your left eyebrow down.” Bad advice, as that squint became something of a trademark.
Majors didn’t have an easy start in life. His father died in a steel mill accident before he was born, and a drunk driver killed his mother when he was about a year old. He was adopted by his uncle and aunt, and didn’t know they weren’t his real parents until he was a teenager. He was in college on a football scholarship when an injury derailed his plans for a sports career. On a dare, he auditioned for a role in the play “The Crucible” and landed the lead. When he saw his football buddies sitting in the front row with their girlfriends, and tears in everybody’s eyes including the tough-guy athletes, he knew he was onto something.
His big break was The Big Valley, and his first movie was Will Penny¸ starring Charlton Heston. After that, he co-starred in Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law, which is what led to his career-making role as Colonel Steve Austin on The Six Million Dollar Man.
The show started out as a TV movie. Based on the “Cyborg” book series by Martin Caidin, it found its way to TV in three different movies before it finally went to series. That’s when we started seeing that famous opening sequence, with that classic, memorable line uttered by the classic and memorable Oscar Goldman (Richard Anderson), “We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better. Stronger. Faster.”
