GARY BUSEY Biography - Actors and Actresses

 
 

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GARY BUSEY

Name: William Gareth Jacob Busey Sr.                                                 
Born: 29 June 1944 Goose Creek, Texas, U.S.                                         
                                                                                     
William Gareth Jacob Busey Sr. (born June 29, 1944) is an Academy Award- and         
Golden Globe Award-nominated American film and stage actor. He has appeared in a     
number of films, including The Buddy Holly Story, Big Wednesday, Lethal Weapon,     
Point Break, Valley of the Wolves Iraq and Under Siege.                             
                                                                                     
Busey was born in Goose Creek (now Baytown), Texas, the son of Virginia (née       
Arnett), a homemaker, and Delmer Lloyd Busey, a construction design manager.         
He graduated from Nathan Hale Highschool in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He attended             
Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas, where he became interested in       
acting. He is listed as one of the university's "outstanding alumni." He then       
transferred to Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, where he quit school         
just one class short of graduation. In 1971, wife Judy Helkenberg gave birth to     
his son, fellow actor Jake Busey. Gary and Judy divorced when Jake was nineteen.     
On December 4, 1988, Busey was severely injured in a motorcycle accident in         
which he was not wearing a helmet. His skull was fractured and doctors feared he     
suffered permanent brain damage. Busey has spoken out as being a Born Again         
Christian as a result of a near-death experience he had resulting from his           
motorcycle accident. He currently lives in Malibu.                                   
                                                                                     
Busey began his show-business career as a drummer in "The Rubber Band". He           
appears on several Leon Russell recordings, credited as playing drums under the     
name "Teddy Jack Eddy", a character he created when he was a cast member of a       
local television comedy show in Tulsa, Oklahoma called The Uncanny Film Festival     
and Camp Meeting (which starred fellow Tulsan Gailard Sartain as "Dr. Mazeppa       
Pompazoidi"). He played in a band called Carp, who released one album on Epic       
Records in 1969. Busey continued to play several small roles in both film and       
television during the 1970s. In 1975, as the character "Harvey Daley" he was the     
last person killed on the series Gunsmoke (in the third to the last episode, No.     
633 - "The Busters").                                                               
                                                                                     
In 1978, he starred as Buddy Holly in The Buddy Holly Story with Sartain as The     
Big Bopper. The movie earned Busey an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. In the       
same year he also starred in the critically-acclaimed surfing movie Big             
Wednesday.                                                                           
                                                                                     
In the 1980s, Busey's roles included D.C. Cab, Silver Bullet (adapted from Cycle     
of the Werewolf by Stephen King), and Lethal Weapon. In the 1990s, he appeared       
in Predator 2, Rookie of the Year, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Under Siege,     
The Firm and Point Break. Gary Busey appeared in the 2006 Turkish film, Valley       
of the Wolves Iraq, (Kurtlar Vadisi: Irak, in Turkish). The film, accused of         
anti-Americanism, and anti-Semitism, tells the story of the U.S. Army run           
amok in Iraq, and brought into check by a brave Turkish soldier; Gary Busey         
plays a Jewish-American Army doctor who harvests fresh organs from injured Iraqi     
prisoners to sell to rich patients in New York, London and Tel Aviv.                 
                                                                                     
In 2007, he appeared as "himself" portraying the one and only Gary Busey on HBO's   
Entourage. Producers at HBO asked Busey to play a "character" on the show who       
was the self-named actor who is also a famous painter and sculpter. Although,       
Busey is not actually a painter, he does love to sing and write music.               
                                                                                     
Busey was once again 'front and center' in the media, when during the E!             
broadcast of the 2008 Oscar red carpet pre-show, he interrupted host Ryan           
Seacrest's interview with Jennifer Garner and Laura Linney, giving Garner a bear     
hug. Busey later apologized for the incident.