Dean Stockwell, Quantum Leap star, dies at 85

Deadline

Stockwell, who died of natural causes on Sunday morning, earned four Emmy nominations playing Al Calavicci, the hologram best friend of Scott Bakula's time-traveling Dr. Sam Beckett, on the 1989-1993 NBC sci-fi drama Quantum Leap. Stockwell's acting career spanned 70 years, from 1945 (when he was a child actor) until his retirement 2015. One of Stockwell's final roles was a reunion with Bakula in 2014 on NCIS: New Orleans. Stockwell also had a recurring role on JAG and starred on the Battlestar Galactica reboot, where he played John Cavil, aka Number One, a humanoid Cylon model that appears as a highly rational, eccentric man in his late-sixties. Stockwell was coming off an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor for Married to the Mob when he signed on for Quantum Leap. But in a 1990 interview with the Los Angeles Times, he waved off the notion that film actors can get trapped in television. “I think it’s obviously not a concern of mine, because I chose with my own free will to do a TV series,” he explained. “And I chose to do one right at a time when I was enjoying my greatest success in films. I’m a father to my children, and that’s my greatest responsibility in life. I mean, if I can work in Los Angeles and be able to see them all the time, isn’t it to my advantage?”