George Peppard

The Heir Who Didn't Want to Rule

George Peppard arrived in New York with an engineering degree under his arm and an ambition that didn't fit in the classrooms of the Actors Studio. Lee Strasberg saw in him the natural successor to the intense gazes of the era. But Peppard didn't want to be anyone's second.

In 1961 his face appeared on marquees around the world alongside Audrey Hepburn.

That role in Breakfast at Tiffany's gave him a leading-man status that never quite suited his reclusive personality. He earned seventy-five thousand dollars for playing Paul Varjak. And although the on-screen chemistry seemed perfect, the reality on the set was a constant battlefield.

He looked down on the lightness of romantic comedy.

The Price of Never Keeping Quiet

His reputation as a difficult actor began to take shape before he turned thirty. Peppard corrected directors and challenged every line of dialogue because he felt more qualified than the screenwriters who hired him.

That cost him projects that could have changed his career.

He lost the chance to star in The Fall of the Roman Empire because of his contract demands and his air of superiority. Soon after, the industry started seeing him as a financial risk. He shot The Insatiable Ones in 1964, and critics were merciless about his coldness on camera.

But he didn't care much as long as the paycheck was big.

From the Big Screen to Hannibal's Cigar

Alcoholism dulled his abilities for much of the 1970s. He spent a fortune on divorces and legal battles while trying to launch his own projects as a producer that nobody wanted to finance.

Television was his lifeline.

His first big break was Banacek in 1972, where he played an insurance investigator of Polish descent. That series let him maintain a movie-star lifestyle even after the movies had definitively turned their back on him. But the true worldwide phenomenon wouldn't arrive until 1983.

Stephen J. Cannell offered him the role of John Hannibal Smith in The A-Team.

Peppard took the job because he urgently needed money to settle his debts with the U.S. tax authorities. For five seasons he led a group of mercenaries who fired thousands of bullets without killing anyone. He earned one hundred thousand dollars per episode, and his relationship with Mr. T was so toxic that the two didn't speak for years.

And the gamble paid off.

In 1992 doctors diagnosed him with a tumor in his right lung after decades of smoking three packs of cigarettes a day. His last professional appearance was in an episode of the series Matlock filmed in 1994, where he played a private investigator.

George Peppard died at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles on May 8, 1994, from pneumonia complicated by his cancer. His body was buried at Northview Cemetery in Dearborn.