IAmes Sikking, who played a hardened police lieutenant in Hill Street Blues and as the main character is a kind-hearted father Dr. Doogie Howserdied at the age of 90.
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Sikking died of complications related to dementia, his publicist Cynthia Snyder said in a statement Sunday night.
Born March 5, 1934, in Los Angeles, the youngest of five children, he began his acting career playing an uncredited role in Roger Corman's film. Five guns to the west and a small role in an episode of Perry MasonHe also landed guest roles on a litany of popular 1970s television series, from the action-packed Impossible mission, MASH POTATOES The FBI, The Rockford Files, Hawaii Five-O And Charlie's Angels has Eight is enough And Little House on the Prairie.
Hill Street Blues The film, which debuted in 1981, is a new take on the traditional police procedural. Sikking plays Lt. Howard Hunter, a Vietnam War veteran who leads the Metropolitan Police Department's emergency response team in an unnamed city.
The critically acclaimed series was a drama, but the tense nature and quirks of Sikking's characters were often used for comedic purposes. Sikking based his performance on a military instructor he had during basic training when his military service interrupted his time at the University of California, Los Angeles, from which he graduated in 1959.
The instructor looked like he had hair made of steel and his uniform had so much starch in it that you knew it would stick in a corner when he took it off in the barracks. said THE Fresno Bee in 2014, when he conducted a series of interviews with various publications marking the release of the box set.
When it debuted on the heels of a double Hollywood hit, the NBC show was greeted with low ratings and little fanfare. But the struggling network kept it on the air: That demographic word came up, Sikking said THE Star Tribune in 2014. We were reaching people with a certain level of education and who were earning a certain type of money. They called it the Squire audience.
The series eventually ran until 1987, although for a brief moment it was uncertain whether Sikking would make it that far. A December 1983 episode ended with his character contemplating suicide. The cliffhanger has been compared to the Who Shot J.R. mystery from Dallas shortly before, although the issue was quickly resolved when TV extras accidentally aired a teaser summary that made it clear that Hunter had been rescued.
I remember when Howard tried to kill himself. My brother called me and said, “Do you still have a job?” I said, “Yeah,” and he said, “Oh, that's good,” and he hung up, and Sikking said to the police, “Do you still have a job?” Fresno Bee.
Sikking was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama in 1984. The appearance and format of Hill Street Blues It was something new for Sikking and many viewers, from the grimy look of the set to the multiple plots that often required actors to work in the background, even when they had no lines in the scene.
“It was really hard work, but everyone loved it and it showed. When you have people who are involved in the creation, the manufacturing, whatever you want to call it, who are really involved and love doing it, you’re going to get a good product,” he said. said Parade.com in 2014. We always had three different stories in each episode, which meant you had to listen and pay attention because everything was important.
Apart Hill Street BluesSikking played the role of Captain Styles in 1984's Star Trek III: The Search for SpockHe wasn't enthusiastic about the role, but he was attracted by the idea that it would only take him one day on set.
It wasn't my cup of tea. I wasn't interested in that kind of space stuff. I had an arrogant point of view at the time. I wanted to do real theatre. I wanted to do serious shows, not something that was based on someone's imagination of what space would be like, Sikking explain on startrek.com in 2014. So I had a silly bias against it, which is weird because I probably and happily signed up for more of this, that or the other thing than Star Trek than anything I've done before.
After the end of Hill Street BluesHe starred in nearly 100 episodes of Dr. Dougie Howserreuniting with Steven Bochco, who co-created both Hill Street Blues and the sitcom starring Neil Patrick Harris.
He married Florine Caplan, with whom he had two children and four grandchildren.
Sikking was nearly retired by the time the box set was released. Hill Street Blues was released. He had fewer but memorable roles after the turn of the millennium, as a guest star in Calm your enthusiasm and star in romantic comedy movies Overexcitement And A fact of honorHis last roles were as a guest star in a 2012 episode of The closest and in a movie the same year, Just an American.
Sikking continued to participate in charity events. He long competed in celebrity golf tournaments and once attended the opening of a health center in an Iowa town of just 7,200 people. “I actually came to get something from you, the air I don’t see,” Sikking told the crowd of 100. “Where we come from, if it ain’t brown, we don’t know how to breathe it,” the Associated Press reported in 1982.
“I would probably do something if it would get me going. Acting is a license to be introspective. It's a big ego trip to be an actor,” he told startrek.com in 2014. I have to say, in the last few years that I haven't worked, obscurity has been quite appealing.
The condiment of my life is luck, he concluded.
