O.J. Simpson
Gridiron star and actor BORN JULY 9, 1947 DIED APRIL 10, 2024, AGED 76
O.J. SIMPSON was the epitome of the all-American superstar who went from hero to zero.
The American footballer forged a successful NFL career and was one of the sport’s finest running backs with the Buffalo Bills, before making his mark as a Hollywood actor.
But his golden-boy image evaporated one evening in 1994 as an army of police cars chased his Ford Bronco for 90 minutes on live TV, when Simpson became the main suspect in the murders of his former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.
Simpson was cleared in an infamous double murder trial but, in 2008, he was found guilty of armed robbery and conspiracy to kidnap, and served nine years in prison.
Before that, Simpson had been found liable for Brown and Goldman’s
deaths in a civil trial and was ordered to pay their families $33.5million in damages.
Orenthal James Simpson was born in San Francisco to Eunice, an orderly on a psychiatric ward, and Jimmy, a cook and bank employee. Jimmy was also a drag queen, who in later life announced he was gay and died of Aids in 1986.
During a glittering NFL career with Buffalo Bills and the San Francisco 49ers, “the Juice” also starred in TV series Roots and movies including The Towering Inferno and Capricorn One.
But in Hollywood he made his name as a comedy actor, starring in The Naked Gun trilogy as Detective Nordberg, alongside Leslie Nielsen as Frank Drebin.
Simpson had three children with Marguerite Whitley before they divorced in 1979.
He was married to Nicole Brown from 1985 to 1992. The couple had two children.
He died from cancer.