LOS ANGELES (AP) R. Lee Ermey, a former Marine who made a career in Hollywood playing hard-nosed military men like Gunnery Sgt. Hartman in Stanley Kubricks Full Metal Jacket, has died.
Ermeys longtime manager Bill Rogin says he died Sunday morning from pneumonia-related complications. He was 74.
The Kansas native was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for his memorable performance in Full Metal Jacket, in which he immortalized lines such as: What is your major malfunction?
His co-stars Matthew Modine and Vincent DOnofrio tweeted their condolences Sunday evening.
#SemperFidelis Always faithful. Always loyal. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light, Modine wrote, quoting the Dylan Thomas poem. RIP amigo. PVT. Joker.
Vincent DOnofrio added: Ermey was the real deal. The knowledge of him passing brings back wonderful memories of our time together.
Born Ronald Lee Ermey in 1944, Ermey served 11 years in the Marine Corps and spent 14 months in Vietnam and then in Okinawa, Japan, where he became staff sergeant. His first film credit was as a helicopter pilot in Francis Ford Coppolas Apocalypse Now, which was quickly followed by a part in The Boys in Company C as a drill instructor.
He raked in more than 60 credits in film and television across his long career in the industry, often playing authority figures in everything from Se7en to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake.
The part he would become most well-known for, in Full Metal Jacket, wasnt even originally his. Ermey had been brought on as a technical consultant for the 1987 film, but he had his eyes on the role of the brutal gunnery sergeant and filmed his own audition tape of him yelling out insults while tennis balls flew at him. An impressed Kubrick gave him the role.
