36 Facts About Lawrence Tierney

Lawrence James Tierney was an American film and television actor who is best known for his many screen portrayals of mobsters and tough guys in a career that spanned over 50 years.

Lawrence Tierney's roles mirrored his own frequent brushes with the law.

Lawrence Tierney's father was an Irish-American policeman with the New York aqueduct police force.

Lawrence Tierney was a star athlete at Boys' High School, winning awards for track and field and joining Omega Gamma Delta fraternity.

Lawrence Tierney was spotted there in 1943 by an RKO talent scout and given a film contract to work in Hollywood, California.

In 1943 and 1944, Lawrence Tierney was cast in several uncredited roles in RKO releases such as Gildersleeve on Broadway, Government Girl, The Ghost Ship for producer Val Lewton, The Falcon Out West, Seven Days Ashore, and Youth Runs Wild, for Lewton.

Back at RKO, Lawrence Tierney resumed his work there in small and supporting roles in Those Endearing Young Charms, Back to Bataan, Mama Loves Papa, and in the Western Badman's Territory in which he portrays Jesse James.

Lawrence Tierney next starred as a reformed prison inmate in the 1946 release San Quentin.

In Feist's film, Lawrence Tierney plays a homicidal hitch-hiker, while under Wise's direction he portrays a suave but murderous conman.

Yet, in reflecting on his career, Lawrence Tierney himself maintained he did not like playing such violent roles:.

In 1950, Lawrence Tierney was cast by Eagle-Lion Films to star in Kill or Be Killed, directed by Max Nosseck, who had directed Dillinger.

That same year Lawrence Tierney only received second billing in Joseph Pevney's Shakedown, although in 1951 he returned to a starring role in another film produced by Eagle Lion and directed by Nosseck: The Hoodlum.

Lawrence Tierney then returned to RKO to play a supporting role, performing again as Jesse James in Best of the Badmen.

Lawrence Tierney's supporting work in that film earned him a request by the director of Paramount Pictures to put him under contract, but that proposal was dropped by the studio when the actor was arrested for fighting in a bar.

Lawrence Tierney did share top billing with Kathleen Crowley, John Carradine, and Jayne Mansfield in the low-budget film noir Female Jungle, but as offers of further screen work steadily declined, he returned to the stage, playing Duke Mantee in a touring version of The Petrified Forest alongside Franchot Tone and Betsy von Furstenberg.

Lawrence Tierney was in The Kirlian Witness, Bloodrage, and Arthur.

Lawrence Tierney was second billed in the independently produced horror film Midnight.

Lawrence Tierney returned to Hollywood in December 1983, and over the next 16 years, resumed a fairly successful acting career in film and television.

In 1984, Lawrence Tierney appeared as part of a national campaign in an Excedrin TV commercial playing a construction worker.

Between 1985 and 1987, Lawrence Tierney made several guest appearances on the last two seasons of the police drama Hill Street Blues, portraying Desk Sergeant Jenkins working the precinct's night shifts.

Lawrence Tierney had a more substantial supporting role as the father of protagonist Ryan O'Neal in Norman Mailer's film adaptation of his own novel Tough Guys Don't Dance.

Lawrence Tierney played a baseball-bat wielding bar owner in the film adaptation of Stephen King's Silver Bullet.

Lawrence Tierney credited Tough Guys Don't Dance in particular with rejuvenating his acting career, and he personally ranked it as some of his best work.

In 1988, Lawrence Tierney played Cyrus Redblock, a tough holodeck gangster in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Big Goodbye".

Lawrence Tierney later referred to Tierney as "a complete lunatic" who "just needed to be sedated".

Lawrence Tierney turned to doing voice-over work on animated features and made occasional appearances in film and television as his health slowly deteriorated until his death.

One of Lawrence Tierney's later roles was an uncredited cameo appearance as Bruce Willis' invalid father in Armageddon in a short scene which ended up being deleted from the theatrical version.

Lawrence Tierney was an admitted alcoholic who tried to go sober in 1982 after having a mild stroke, once observing during a 1987 interview that he "threw away about seven careers through drink".

Between 1944 and 1951, Lawrence Tierney was arrested over 12 times in Los Angeles for brawling, frequently for drunkenness which included ripping a public telephone off a wall in a bar, hitting a waiter in the face with a sugar bowl for refusing to serve him any more drinks, and attempting to choke a taxi driver.

Lawrence Tierney was jailed for three months for brawling in May 1947 and again in June 1949 and drunkenness in January 1949 and October 1950.

Lawrence Tierney served 66 days in the city jail in Chicago, Illinois from March to May 1952 for drunk and disorderly charges.

Two years later, Lawrence Tierney was questioned by New York City police in connection with the apparent suicide of a 24-year-old woman who had jumped from the window of her high-rise apartment.

In July 1991, during the filming of Reservoir Dogs, Lawrence Tierney shot at his nephew in a drunken rage at his Hollywood apartment, and was arrested and jailed.

Lawrence Tierney was released for a day from the jail to continue filming, as recounted by the film's director Quentin Tarantino in an interview.

Lawrence Tierney did father a daughter named Elizabeth who was born in 1961.

On February 26,2002, at age 82, Lawrence Tierney died in his sleep of pneumonia in a Los Angeles nursing home, where he had been residing for nearly two years.