Weathers played football as a defensive end in college. He started his college career in 1966 at Long Beach City College,[3] where he did not play in 1966 due to an ankle injury suffered when he tripped over a curb surrounding the running track while warming up for practice with another linebacker. He then transferred and played for San Diego State University, becoming a letterman for the San Diego State Aztecs in 1968 and 1969, helping the Aztecs win the 1969 Pasadena Bowl, finishing with an 11–0 record, and a No. 18 ranking in the Final UPI Poll,[5] playing for head coach Don Coryell. At San Diego State, Weathers—who considered acting his first love and had been performing in plays even back in grade school[6]—received a master in theatre arts.[7]
Professional football career
Weathers signed with the Oakland Raiders of the NFL as an undraftedfree agent in 1970. Now playing as a linebacker,[3] Weathers played in seven games for the Raiders in 1970, helping them win the AFC West Division title, on their way to the first-ever AFC Championship Game. Before the 1971 season, Weathers converted to the position of strong safety.[8] He played in one game of the 1971 NFL season before the Raiders released him in September 1971,[9] after head coach John Madden told Weathers, "You're just too sensitive."[6][10]
Weathers retired from football in 1974, and began pursuing an acting career.[14] In his NFL career he appeared in 8 games in two seasons, but did not record any stats. The only stat he recorded in his CFL career was a single fumble recovery. In later years, Weathers narrated NFL Films' season recap of the 1999, 2000 and 2001 seasons.[15] During the 2017 NFL draft, he appeared on NFL Network's pre-draft coverage.[16]
Acting career
Weathers in 2015
Weathers began working as an extra while still playing football.[3] He had his first significant roles in two blaxploitation films directed by his longtime friend Arthur Marks: Bucktown (1975) and Friday Foster (1975).[17] Weathers also appeared in an early 1975 episode of the sitcom Good Times titled "The Nude", portraying an angry husband who suspected his wife of cheating on him with J.J. He also guest-starred in a 1975 episode of Kung Fu titled "The Brothers Caine", and in an episode of Cannon titled "The Hero". In 1976, he appeared as a loan shark in an episode of the crime-drama Starsky & Hutch,[18] and in the Barnaby Jones episode "The Bounty Hunter" as escaped convict Jack Hopper.[19]
While auditioning for the role of Apollo Creed alongside Sylvester Stallone in Rocky, Weathers criticized Stallone's acting, which led to him getting the role.[20] He reprised the role of Apollo Creed in the next three Rocky films: Rocky II (1979), Rocky III (1982), and Rocky IV (1985).[21]
Weathers briefly appears as an Army MP in one of the three released versions of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (originally released in 1977). In 1978, Weathers portrayed Vince Sullivan in a TV movie, Not This Time. In the late 1970s and 1980s, Weathers starred in a number of action films for the small and big screen, including Force 10 from Navarone (1978), Predator (1987), Action Jackson (1988), and Hurricane Smith (1992).[22] Weathers hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live in 1988 and appeared in a skit on the show in 2003.[23]
Weathers appeared in Michael Jackson's "Liberian Girl" music video and co-starred in the 1996 Adam Sandler comedy Happy Gilmore, as Chubbs, a golf legend teaching Happy how to play golf. He reprised the role nearly four years later in the Sandler comedy Little Nicky. Filming a fall stunt in Happy Gilmore, Weathers fractured two vertebrae and his osteophytes grew out and connected and self-fused badly. He said he was in excruciating pain for three to four years.[24]
Another notable television role was Sgt. Adam Beaudreaux on the cop show Street Justice. Afterwards, during the final two seasons of In the Heat of the Night (1992–1994), his character, Hampton Forbes, replaced Bill Gillespie as the chief of police. He also played MACV-SOGColonel Brewster in the CBS series Tour of Duty.[25]
Weathers provided the voice for Colonel Samuel Garrett in the Pandemic Studios video game Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction. In 2005, he was a narrator on Conquest! The Price of Victory — Witness the Journey of the Trojans!, an 18-part television show about USC athletics. Weathers was a principal of Red Tight Media, a film and video production company that specializes in tactical training films made for the United States armed forces.[27] He also appeared in one episode of ER in 2008 during its finale season.[28]
For the sixth film in the Rocky series, Rocky Balboa (2006), Stallone asked Weathers, Mr. T, and Dolph Lundgren for permission to use footage from their appearances in the earlier Rocky films. Mr. T and Lundgren agreed, but Weathers wanted an actual part in the movie, even though his character had died in Rocky IV.[29] Stallone refused, and Weathers decided not to allow Stallone to use his image for flashbacks from the previous films. They instead used footage of a fighter who looks similar to Weathers.[30] Weathers and Stallone patched up their differences and Weathers agreed to allow footage of him from previous films to be used throughout Creed (2015).[29]
Weathers portrayed the father of Michael Strahan and Daryl "Chill" Mitchell's characters on the short-lived 2009 Fox sitcom Brothers. Weathers acted as Brian "Gebo" Fitzgerald in advertising for Old Spice's sponsorship of NASCAR driver Tony Stewart. He also appeared in an ongoing series of web-only advertisements for Credit Union of Washington, dispensing flowers and the advice that "change is beautiful" to puzzled-looking bystanders. He also starred in a series of commercials for Bud Light, in which he introduced plays from the "Bud Light Playbook." At the conclusion of each commercial, Weathers could be seen bursting through the Bud Light Playbook and shouting "Here we go!"[31]
Weathers was married three times. He married Mary-Ann Castle in 1973; they had two sons and divorced in 1983. In 1984, Weathers married Rhona Unsell; they divorced in 2006. Weathers was married to Jennifer Peterson from 2007 until 2009.[3] Weathers was with his longtime partner Christine Kludjian from 2014, until his death in 2024.[35]
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