Remembering Jerry Doyle (1956 - 2016)
Today is Jerry Doyle's birthday.
Well, it would have been...but the actor sadly passed away on July 27th, 2016 (just days after his 60th birthday) of natural causes with complicating factors due to chronic alcoholism.
Jerry Doyle was born in Brooklyn, New York, graduated from Pope John XXIII Regional High School in Sparta, New Jersey, in 1973, where he played varsity football and basketball, and in 1978, earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Aeronautics from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, while also receiving his flight training. Previously a corporate jet pilot and after a decade as a stockbroker on Wall Street, Doyle made an abrupt career change into acting in 1991, when he moved to Los Angeles. He appeared on television in Moonlighting, had a recurring role as a lawyer on the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful, but is best known for his role as Chief of Security Michael Garibaldi on television's Babylon 5. Doyle was also an American talk radio host, a right-libertarian political commentator, television actor and founder of the content platform EpicTimes. His nationally syndicated talk show, The Jerry Doyle Show, aired throughout the United States on Talk Radio Network. And from 1996 to 1997, Doyle was the voice of the titular character in the animated cartoon Captain Simian & the Space Monkeys.
I will always associate Jerry Doyle with the character of Michael Garibaldi. The best friend of Commander Jeffrey Sinclair in the Babylon 5 series, Doyle's character first seemed to be a man with an honest decency about him, who tried to keep his friend on the sane and narrow (as Sinclair obviously had some PTSD from the period of the Minbari War, not to mention memory loss), but it soon became clear that Garibaldi had his own demons (notably his alcoholism) and secrets of his own. With Sinclair's departure and the arrival of Bruce Boxleitner's Captain John Sheridan on the station, Doyle's role as Garibaldi took on different shades and different contexts, and provided the viewer with some terrific plot turns and twists.
Folks had all manner of reactions to Jerry Doyle's performance as Garibaldi in the series, but what no one can deny is that he was a terrific actor, brought a complex, yet understandable, performance and set of emotions into the series, and made Babylon 5 what it was. A terrific person who also had his personal demons in real life.
Rest in Peace, Jerry Doyle. You are missed.