R. Lee Ermey

The sergeant who gave orders to Kubrick

Ronald Lee Ermey wasn't looking for fame when he landed on the set of Stanley Kubrick. He just wanted to advise on how to properly yell at a recruit because he knew the job firsthand. He had served eleven years in the United States Marine Corps, including a fourteen-month stint in Vietnam.

His role in Full Metal Jacket (1987) is pure guerrilla cinema history. The role of Sergeant Hartman had been assigned to another actor, but Ermey recorded a fifteen-minute video tape insulting extras without repeating a single curse word. Kubrick was so impressed that he fired the original actor and handed him control of the sequence.

And the gamble paid off.

That performance earned him a Golden Globe nomination and changed his life forever. But the most surprising part is that Ermey wrote much of his own dialogue. On a Kubrick set, that was practically unheard of (the director usually controlled every syllable), yet he was allowed to improvise 50% of his lines for added realism.

Typecasting as a Badge of Honor

After 1987, Hollywood decided that Ermey could only play one thing. The authoritarian sergeant became his perpetual uniform, and he accepted it with a pragmatic smile. He appeared in Mississippi Burning (1988) and later played a police captain in Seven (1995) under the direction of David Fincher.

He never shed his military image. In fact, he used it cleverly in places nobody expected. In 1995 he gave his voice to the leader of the plastic soldiers in Toy Story. So the man who had terrified a generation of moviegoers ended up voicing a children's toy in one of Pixar's most profitable franchises.

His presence commanded dry, quiet respect on screen.

In 2003, he returned to his darker side for the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. There he played Sheriff Hoyt, a sadist who used his authority to cover up atrocious crimes. Critics agreed that his performance was the only redeeming feature of a production that relied on cheap scares through gore and the chainsaw.

A Retirement Between Weapons and Cameras

Away from the fictional spotlight, Ermey became a familiar face in documentary television. He hosted Mail Call on History Channel for several seasons, answering viewers' questions about military technology. The show let him stay connected to veterans and the armed forces well into the 2000s.

Despite his tough-guy image, his co-stars always described him as a disciplined and punctual professional. In 2012 he gave his voice for the last time to a video game in the Call of Duty series, cementing his status as the ultimate military figure in American pop culture. He never tried to be a method actor because he had already learned the method in the barracks.

His health failed suddenly.

Ronald Lee Ermey died on April 15, 2018, at a hospital in Santa Monica, California. The official cause of death was complications from acute pneumonia at age 74. He rests at Arlington National Cemetery with all the military honors appropriate to his actual rank.