Gary Busey is an American actor who is popularly known for his role as Buddy Holly in The Buddy Holly Story which was released in 1978. He was nominated for Best Actor at the Academy Awards and won Best Actor at the National Society of Film Critics. He was also very opinionated about the afterlife, but what led him to think about heaven differently compared to others?
Actor Gary Busey allegedly refused to play a scene that was supposedly set in paradise because the design looked nothing like the genuine heaven that he apparently visited while in a coma.
Who is Gary Busey?
On June 29, 1944, William Gary Busey was born. He is an actor from the United States. He played Buddy Holly in The Buddy Holly Story, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and a National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actor.
Busey was born in Goose Creek, Texas. He was the son of a homemaker named Sadie Virginia and a construction design manager named Delmer Lloyd Busey. He then moved from Goose Creek to Tulsa when he was in fourth grade, where he later attended Bell Junior High School before graduating from Nathan Hale High School. Busey attended Coffeyville Community College before enrolling on a football scholarship at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas, where he developed an interest in acting. Then transferred to Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma, where he dropped out of one class before graduating.
Busey began his career in show business as a drummer in The Rubber Band. He appears on several Leon Russell recordings, credited as playing drums under the name Teddy Jack Eddy, a character he created while a cast member of The Uncanny Film Festival and Camp Meeting on KTUL, a local television comedy show in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
He was a member of the band Carp, which released one album on Epic Records in 1969. Throughout the 1970s, Busey continued to appear in several minor roles in both film and television. As the character Harvey Daley, he was the last person killed on the television series Gunsmoke in 1975. (Source: Biography)
Gary Busey’s Accident and Surgery
On December 4, 1988, actor Gary Busey crashed his motorcycle into a highway guardrail, sustaining serious head trauma that was exacerbated by the fact that he was not wearing a helmet. Busey died on the operating table after two hours of neurosurgery to repair his damaged brain.
Angels appeared to me. Angels were all around me. And they don’t look like they do on Christmas cards. They’re large balls of light that float around and carry nothing but love and warmth.
Gary Busey, American Actor
Busey successfully underwent surgery in 1997 to remove a cancerous, plum-sized tumor from his sinus cavity. Busey developed nose bleeds, which led to the discovery of the growth. (Source: ENews)
What Does Gary Busey Do Today?
Busey is still active in the industry today. His most recent work was released in May 2020 where he plays a pet court show judge in the series Gary Busey Pet Judge. (Source: The Rolling Stones)