It was a movie-buff aunt who suggested that Mr. “I bet folks were happy to see you on the porch,” Mr. Kiel was nonetheless an easy-to-recognize presence on television, and a frequent one, beginning in the 1960s, playing characters with names like Moose, Iggy, Animal - and, inevitably, Tiny - on a variety of dramatic and comedy series. It frustrated him, he sometimes said, that people often confused him with other outsize entertainment figures, like Andre the Giant, the wrestler-turned-actor Ted Cassidy, who played Lurch on “The Addams Family,” or Fred Gwynne, who was the Frankenstein-like Herman Munster on “The Munsters.”īut Mr. Kiel (pronounced keel) stood more than seven feet tall, weighed upward of 300 pounds and had a hormonal disorder known as acromegaly, which is often associated with gigantism and causes a gradual enlargement of bones in the hands, the feet and the face, all of which gave him a distinctive appearance that he mustered effectively for both threatening and comic effect. Agnes Medical Center confirmed the death without giving a cause, The Associated Press reported. Also subverted in Happy Gilmore, where he appears to play right into it in his first scene but then is a perfectly nice, pleasant guy when he shows up again - getting a nail embedded in your skull would put a crimp in anyone's day.Richard Kiel, an actor whose intimidating frame and striking features made him a natural choice to play thugs, giants, alien creatures and villains of various stripes - notably Jaws, the assassin with metal dentition in two James Bond films - died on Wednesday in Fresno, Calif.He actually subverted this with Jaws by making him more "human" and comedic, and the character became invoked surprisingly popular as a result. He had to wear painful steel teeth prosthetics to play him. Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: His second wife Diane was a solid 25 inches (63.5 cm) shorter than him.In 2007 he published a biography of abolitionist Cassius Clay, one of his personal heroes, and donated the sales to a scholarship fund in Kentucky. He Also Did: Kiel was also an amateur historian in his spare time.Years before playing Jaws, he did a similar role in the grade-Z Bond knock-off A Man Called Dagger, where his character Otto starts to give an erudite summary of Adolf Hitler's tactical mistakes during World War II before being cut off by his villainous employer. Genius Bruiser: As noted below, he worked to make his characters examples of this trope.
Character Tics: He was blind in one eye, resulting in his head often being cocked to the side.Loveless was played by actor Michael Dunn, who was 3 ft 10 in height due to medical dwarfism. Miguelito Loveless in The Wild Wild West. Big Guy, Little Guy: As Voltaire, the assistant of Dr.Adam Westing: Often lampooned his role of Jaws in commercials or in films such as Inspector Gadget.I said if I were to play the part, I want to give the character some human characteristics, like perseverance, frustration." By the the time of Moonraker, he had persuaded the movie's crew not only that Jaws could renounce his psychotic ways but also that he could find love. invoked Actor-Inspired Element: About getting the role of Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me, he said: "I was very put off by the description of the character and I thought, 'Well, they don't really need an actor, he's more a monster part'.Acting for Two: He played all of the Kanamits, a race of Ditto Aliens, in The Twilight Zone (1959) episode " To Serve Man".
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