Gil Gerard

Gilbert Cyril Gerard was born on January 23, 1943, in Little Rock, Arkansas, the youngest of three sons. His mother worked as a college instructor and his father as a salesman. Gerard attended Little Rock Catholic High School for Boys before enrolling at the University of Central Arkansas, which he left without completing his degree. In 1960, while at a Maryknoll seminary in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, he played the title role in an all-male production of The Music Man.

Gerard relocated to New York City to pursue an acting career, supporting himself by driving a taxicab while studying drama during the day. A fare he picked up during this period expressed interest in his situation as an unemployed actor and directed him to report to the New York location set of Love Story. He arrived and was hired as an extra, and was later selected for a small part, though he did not appear in the finished film. Over the following years, Gerard worked extensively in television commercials, appearing in nearly 400 of them, including a run as a spokesman for the Ford Motor Company. His Broadway work during this period included a 1971 appearance in Applause.

His film work began with a small role in the gay-themed film Some of My Best Friends Are... in 1971, followed by the thriller Man on a Swing in 1974. He then spent two years in a prominent role on the daytime soap opera The Doctors. Gerard established his own production company in partnership with a writer-producer, co-wrote a screenplay titled Hooch, and filmed it in 1977 as a starring vehicle for himself. That same year he traveled to California to co-star with Yvette Mimieux in Ransom for Alice! and to appear alongside Lee Grant in Universal's Airport '77. He also appeared in a 1977 episode of Hawaii Five-O, playing Marty Cobb, a former cop and recovering alcoholic. A guest appearance on Little House on the Prairie led producer-star Michael Landon to cast him in the lead role of the 1978 television movie Killing Stone.

Gerard's most recognized role came when he was cast as Captain William "Buck" Rogers in the television series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, which ran from 1979 to 1981. The feature-length pilot episode was released theatrically before the series began broadcasting. His subsequent television work included a starring role in the 1982 TV movie Hear No Evil, in which he played a character named Dragon, as well as leading roles in the short-lived series Sidekicks in 1986 and E.A.R.T.H. Force in 1990. In 1992, he hosted the Fox Network reality series Code 3, which followed firefighters across the United States responding to emergency calls; the show continued into 1993. Throughout the remainder of the 1990s, he made guest appearances on programs including Fish Police, Brotherly Love, The Big Easy, Days of Our Lives, and Pacific Blue.

Gerard reunited with his Buck Rogers co-star Erin Gray in 2007 for the television film Nuclear Hurricane. That same year he was the subject of a one-hour Discovery Health Channel documentary, Action Hero Makeover, written, produced, and directed by his then-companion Adrienne Crow. The film chronicled his recovery following life-saving mini-gastric bypass surgery he underwent in October 2005, documenting his weight loss of 145 pounds over ten months. In 2009, Gerard and Gray returned to the Buck Rogers universe by portraying the characters' parents in the pilot episode of James Cawley's Buck Rogers Begins internet video series. He guest-starred as Admiral Jack Sheehan in the January 1, 2014, episode of the fan web series Star Trek: Phase II, and in 2015 voiced Megatronus in Transformers: Robots in Disguise.

In his personal life, Gerard had been married five times by the end of the 1980s. His first marriage, to a secretary in Arkansas in the 1960s, lasted eight months. His second marriage, to a bank executive after his move to New York, lasted approximately seven years. He married actress and model Connie Sellecca in 1979; their son, Gilbert Vincent Gerard, known as Gib, was born in 1981. That marriage ended in divorce in 1987 following a custody dispute that awarded Sellecca primary custody of their son. Gerard married interior designer Bobi Leonard the same year, though that marriage was dissolved in 1989. His fifth wife was Janet Gerard, to whom he was married for eighteen years until his death. The couple lived in northern Georgia.

Gerard was open about his struggles with addiction to cocaine, alcohol, and compulsive overeating. By 1988 his weight had reached 300 pounds, and he pursued a self-help approach to treatment. He estimated that his weight difficulties had cost him approximately one million dollars in lost work opportunities. By 1990 his weight had dropped to 220 pounds, and his 2005 bypass surgery resulted in further significant weight loss documented in the 2007 documentary.

Gerard died on December 16, 2025, at the age of 82. His wife Janet announced his death on Facebook, stating that he had died from a rare and aggressive form of cancer.