Profile : Nielsen’s Rating Is High : ‘Naked Gun’ Star Trades Clowning For Charming in a Drama on NBC

After 40 years in the acting biz, Leslie Nielsen finally has achieved superstar status as the inept goofball Lt. Frank Drebin in the “Naked Gun” box-office hits.

But the 65-year-old Canadian has discovered being a star doesn’t mean everybody knows your name.

“I came back from Canada and went into the duty-free shop,” Nielsen was explaining one recent morning. “The lady behind the counter says, ‘I know who you are. You’re Lloyd Bridges. ‘ So I said, ‘I am not Lloyd Bridges, but I am an actor and my name is Leslie Nielsen.’ And she said, ‘Oh yeah, I am so embarrassed. Leslie Nielsen, of course! But you play Lloyd Bridges!’ ”

Nielsen began laughing so hard, tears welled up in his eyes. “I love that one,” he said. “I fell on the floor.”

The actor wiped his eyes. “I also have another one,” he said enthusiastically. “In Detroit, I was going to the elevator in the hotel and I hear, ‘Hey, Hey.’ I turn around and there is a guy in a cowboy hat. I look at him and knew instantly he had seen my best work. No doubt about it. There was a look of adoration. He could have been putty in my hands. I thought it was time to be very humble and turned and went to the elevator and pushed the button. He said, ‘Hey, Hey.’ I turned around and he said, ‘ Banacek.’ “

The overzealous fan, of course, mistook the silver-haired Nielsen for the equally silver George Peppard. “There are times when we look a great deal alike,” Nielsen deadpanned. “But I am taller.”

Nielsen has clearly taken his role as a funny man to heart. But he shows a more serious side this week in NBC’s “Chance of a Lifetime,” as a widower who falls in love with a widow (Betty White) who thinks she has a terminal illness.

“Any role that is not Frank Drebin is by definition a serious role,” Nielsen said. “This is a light, sentimental comedy-drama--a chance to be charming and romantic.”

For the first three decades of his career, Nielsen was only cast in deadly serious roles, whether it be as the noble space ship commander in the acclaimed 1956 sci-fi epic “Forbidden Planet” or as the righteous police chief in the NBC series “The Protectors.”

Nielsen was secretly dying to do a comedy, but didn’t have the guts to tell any one.

“I was a closet comedian,” Nielsen said. “Comedy was always special to me, but I wasn’t about to tell anybody, ‘Hey, give that to me. I can do comedy. Let me show you.’ I would never take that chance because it was too special. When you put those special things to the test, a lot of times you are afraid to to it. You may find out that you can’t do it as well as you imagined you could and then your dream is gone.”

But then along came the wild and crazy filmmaking team of David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams who cast Nielsen as the nutty doctor in the 1980 comedy “Airplane!” Two years later, Nielsen starred as Drebin in the Zuckers-Abrahams comedy series “Police Squad!” Though the series only lasted six episodes, it developed a cult following and spawned both “Naked Gun” movies.

“I will be forever grateful to them,” Nielsen said. “It is just an amazing roll of the dice. I am so lucky to be a representative of their humor.”

These days, Nielsen will do anything for a laugh--making disgusting noises with a whoopee cushion on talk shows, dressing up as the Everyready Bunny for a Coors Beer commercial and spoofing Arnold Schwarzenegger as “The Terminator 2” this summer to promote “Naked Gun 2/1/2.”

Playing Drebin has finally given Nielsen permission to be imperfect. “I look like I know what I am talking about because of my behavior and appearance,” he said. “This is where Drebin saves me. Now people don’t look at me if I am doing something really dumb and really stupid and say, ‘Can you imagine a full-grown man doing something like that?’ Now they say, ‘Look at Drebin.’ Look what he’s doing.”’

Nielsen leaned back in his chair. “It’s OK now to be funny,” he said. “And it’s a wonderfu l freedom.”

“Chance of a Lifetime” airs Monday at 9 p.m. on NBC.