Gil Gerard, best known for starring as Captain William “Buck” Rogers in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, has died at the age of 82, just days after being diagnosed with a rare and aggressively fast-moving form of cancer.
Gerard passed away Tuesday, December 16, according to his wife, Janet, who shared the news on Facebook. In an emotional post, she revealed that the timeline between realizing something was wrong and his death was shockingly brief.
“Early this morning Gil, my soulmate, lost his fight with a rare and viciously aggressive form of cancer,” she wrote. “From the moment when we knew something was wrong to his death this morning was only days. No matter how many years I got to spend with him it would have ever been enough.”
Born in Arkansas in 1943, Gerard began his acting career in New York City, initially landing work as an extra on the 1970 film Love Story. He steadily built a résumé through the early 1970s with appearances in films such as Some of My Best Friends Are… and Man on a Swing, before gaining wider recognition as Dr. Alan Stewart on the daytime soap The Doctors, a role he played in more than 160 episodes from 1973 to 1976.
His television work during that period also included appearances on Little House on the Prairie and Hawaii Five-O, along with roles in films like Hooch and Airport ’77. But it was science fiction that ultimately cemented his legacy.
Gerard’s breakout role came when he was cast as Buck Rogers, filming a feature-length pilot that was released theatrically in 1979 amid the science-fiction resurgence sparked by Star Wars and fueled by television hits like Battlestar Galactica.
That renewed appetite for space-based storytelling helped launch Buck Rogers in the 25th Century as a weekly series, which ran for two seasons through 1981. Though the show lasted just 32 episodes, it firmly secured Gerard’s place in sci-fi pop culture during one of the genre’s most influential eras.
Interestingly, Gerard later admitted he was initially hesitant to take the role. In a 2018 interview on the YouTube show GenXGrownUp, he said he worried the part would limit his career, citing what Batman had done to Adam West. “I didn’t want to do this campy stuff,” he recalled.
Following Buck Rogers, Gerard continued working steadily in television, starring in TV movies such as Not Just Another Affair, Hear No Evil, and Johnny Blue. He also led the short-lived series Sidekicks in the mid-1980s and appeared on shows including Nightingales, E.A.R.T.H. Force, and Days of Our Lives. His final on-screen appearance came in the 2016 film The Nice Guys.
Gerard was married four times, including a high-profile marriage to actress Connie Sellecca, with whom he had a son, Gib Gerard. He had been married to his wife Janet for 18 years at the time of his death.
For fans of classic television and science fiction, Gil Gerard will be remembered as a defining face of late-1970s TV, a reluctant hero who ultimately became an enduring icon of the genre.
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