Part of Scary Movie featuring Anna Faris, Regina Hall, Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, and Keenen Ivory Wayans.
Rise to Fame
He got the Airplane! role because he was too convincing to be funny. Thirty years of earnest dramatic work in everything from Forbidden Planet to The Poseidon Adventure had made him the perfect straight man. Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker cast him as Dr. Rumack knowing the deadpan wasn't an act. He delivered lines about being serious with the stone-faced conviction of a man who had no idea anything was funny. The joke was that he wasn't joking.
In the Spotlight
The Naked Gun franchise is what sealed it. The original 1988 film launched Lt. Frank Drebin as one of the defining comedy characters of the era, and Naked Gun 2 1/2 (1991) actually outgrossed the first. Nielsen told the AP in 1988: 'I've finally found my home.' Finding it at 54 is the interesting part. The late reinvention worked because he never played the comedy. He played the character with complete straight-faced commitment, and the absurdity did the rest.
Side Notes
His brother Erik became deputy prime minister of Canada, which is the kind of sibling dynamic that sounds invented. They grew up in a remote Northwest Territories outpost with a population of 12, raised by a strict RCMP father. Nielsen credited his father's discipline as his first acting training: he had to lie to avoid punishment. Off-screen, he carried a remote-controlled fart machine and deployed it in interviews and on set for decades. Not a bit. A lifestyle choice.
Final Chapter
His December 7, 2010 funeral in Fort Lauderdale played the Naked Gun theme. He'd chosen 'Let 'er rip' as his epitaph, a reference to the remote-controlled fart machine he'd carried for decades. His nephew Doug broke the news of his death to a Winnipeg radio station within hours of his passing. Comedians including Patton Oswalt and Russell Brand paid public tribute on Twitter.