Leslie Nielsen

Leslie Nielsen is one of those Columbo guest stars whose later fame can almost distort how good he already was in straight drama. Today he’s remembered first for Airplane! and the Naked Gun films, but for decades before that he was a tall, cool, impeccably composed presence in film and television. Born in Regina, Saskatchewan, on February 11, 1926, Nielsen built a long career playing authority figures, professionals, and men whose confidence could read as either reassuring or faintly suspicious depending on the material. That makes him a very natural fit for Columbo, where surface polish is often half the battle. Nielsen appeared twice, in two very different kinds of roles: first as Peter Hamilton in Lady in Waiting (1971), and later as the spy known as Geronimo (and the victim)—in Identity Crisis (1975). 

Lady in Waiting (Season 1)

In Lady in Waiting, Nielsen plays Peter Hamilton, the company lawyer and boyfriend of Beth Chadwick. He is not the murderer, not the victim, and not really even the episode’s main attraction—yet he matters a great deal. Peter Hamilton has to be credible as the kind of man Beth would risk everything for, while also seeming just grounded enough that he doesn’t belong in the warped emotional ecosystem of the Chadwick household. Nielsen does that beautifully. He plays Hamilton as handsome, composed, and decent, which gives the episode a useful center of gravity while Susan Clark’s Beth spins further and further out. 

Identity Crisis (Season 5)

By the time of Identity Crisis, Nielsen is doing something much juicier. He plays Geronimo, operating under the cover identity A.J. Henderson, an intelligence operative whose reappearance throws Nelson Brenner’s world into chaos. 

Nielsen gives Geronimo an alert, guarded intelligence that makes you believe he belongs in this murky covert world. He doesn’t overplay the espionage angle; he underplays it, which is smarter. 

There’s also something fitting about Nielsen appearing in Identity Crisis specifically. So much of his later comic brilliance depended on his absolute seriousness—his refusal to signal that the material was absurd. That same quality works here in dramatic form. He looks like a man who has spent years keeping secrets, surviving on nerve, and saying less than he knows. 

Beyond Columbo

Outside Columbo, Nielsen’s career was remarkably broad. He became a science-fiction leading man in Forbidden Planet in 1956, then later reinvented himself as one of the great deadpan comic performers of the modern era in Airplane! and The Naked Gun. 

Nielsen died on November 28, 2010, at age 84. But on Columbo, he remains preserved in two especially enjoyable forms: first as the elegant straight arrow (and ultimately key witness) standing near the center of a domestic tragedy, and then as a cool, enigmatic operative in one of the show’s most unusual episodes. Not a bad double legacy for one of television’s most recognizable faces.