After the Naked Gun series and movies, I can’t watch a pre-those Cop dramas featuring him without chuckling at him in the serious scenes in them, which Naked Gun parodied and exaggerated upon!
Nielsen tried to be a serious actor for a while, but he just wasn’t getting the parts. Then suddenly, when he was in his late 50s, his career took off with . . . Airplane! (Ouch!)
Anyway, I’ll always remember him best for Forbidden Planet.