Film & TV
Richard Kiel
1939–2014 · actor
Detroit-born giant of the screen, 7 ft 1.5 in tall, best remembered as Jaws, the steel-toothed henchman of two James Bond films.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Fresno, California
aged 74- Birth name
- Richard Dawson Kiel
- Also known as
- Jaws
- Detroit years
- 1939–1948
- Field
- Film & TV
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Richard Kiel was born in Detroit in 1939 and lived in the city until he was nine, when his family moved to the Los Angeles area; he graduated from Baldwin Park High School in California. His extraordinary height, 7 feet 1.5 inches (2.17 m), shaped his career from the start: 1960s television cast him as monsters and heavies, most memorably the towering alien in the Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man" (1962). His defining role came in 1977, when he played Jaws, the nearly indestructible assassin with steel teeth, in The Spy Who Loved Me; the character proved so popular that he returned in Moonraker (1979) and even got a happy ending. Kiel also appeared in The Longest Yard, Silver Streak and Pale Rider, and a later generation met him as Mr. Larson in Happy Gilmore (1996). No Detroit site is documented for him; the city's claim is his birth and early childhood.
Highlights
- Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979)
- The Kanamit alien in The Twilight Zone's "To Serve Man" (1962)
- Mr. Larson in Happy Gilmore (1996)
- Voiced Vlad in Disney's Tangled (2010)