1. Michael O'Hare was best known for playing the lead role of space station Commander Jeffrey Sinclair in the first season of the science fiction television series Babylon 5.
20 Facts About Michael O'Hare
1. 2.
Michael O'Hare attended Chicago's Mendel Catholic Preparatory High School, where he played football, to defy his doctor who told him he would never be in athletics because of his asthma.
3.
Michael O'Hare received several awards and scholarship offers based on his football ability and scholastic performance.
4.
Michael O'Hare was a member of the Harvard Glee Club during its 1973 World Tour.
5.
Michael O'Hare left Harvard in 1974 to study at the Juilliard School of Drama.
6.
Michael O'Hare later took lessons from Sanford Meisner in the mid-1980s.
7.
Michael O'Hare appeared in a number of theatrical productions on Broadway and in regional theaters, including an acclaimed revival of Shaw's Man and Superman with Philip Bosco; in the role of Col.
8.
Michael O'Hare was the first white actor nominated by the African-American theater community of New York for the AUDELCO Award for Best Actor, for his performance as Captain Jaap van Tonder in Michael Picardie's play Shades of Brown, about apartheid in South Africa.
9.
Michael O'Hare co-starred in the biographical TV movie Marciano and an unsold TV pilot Keefer with William Conrad in the late 1970s.
10.
Michael O'Hare was the lead character in Michael Lengsfield's CINE-award-winning short film Short Term Bonds in 1988, screened at the 1989 Sundance festival.
11.
Michael O'Hare appeared in the pilot and throughout the show's first season in 1994.
12.
Michael O'Hare left the cast for mental health reasons that were not disclosed at the time, but made guest appearances in the second and third seasons.
13.
Michael O'Hare did some voiceover work for commercials and read a radio adaptation of the science fiction novella Think Like a Dinosaur for Seeing Ear Theater.
14.
Babylon 5 creator J Michael Straczynski revealed after O'Hare's death that the actor had had severe mental illness.
15.
Straczynski offered to suspend production for several months to accommodate treatment; Michael O'Hare feared that a hiatus would put the series at risk and he did not want to jeopardize others' jobs.
16.
Michael O'Hare reappeared in a cameo appearance early in season two and returned in season three for a two-part episode which closed his character's story arc.
17.
At that time, Straczynski promised Michael O'Hare to keep his condition secret "to my grave".
18.
Michael O'Hare told him to instead "keep the secret to my grave", arguing that fans deserved to eventually learn the real reason for his departure, and that his experience could raise awareness and understanding for people with mental illness.
19.
Michael O'Hare made no further appearances on Babylon 5 but continued to support the show and appeared at conventions and signing events until his retirement from public appearances in 2000.
20.
On September 28,2012, Straczynski posted that Michael O'Hare had had a heart attack in New York City five days earlier and had remained in a coma until his death that day.