James B. Sicking said,Hill Street Blues” and “Doogie Howser, MD” has passed away. He was 90 years old.
Sicking died Saturday from complications from dementia, spokeswoman Cynthia Snyder said. variety and Associated Press.
“During his incredible career, Sikking’s brilliant and evocative facial expressions have given us drama, comedy, tragedy and lurid farce,” Snyder said in a statement to Variety. “His career spanned more than six decades on television, film and stage.”
USA TODAY has reached out to Snyder for comment.
Before rising to fame as Lt. Howard Hunter in “Hill Street Blues,” Sicking starred in films such as “Mission: Impossible” and “mash” “Hawaii Five-O“, “Charlie’s Angels” and “Little House on the Prairie“
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In 1981, he began playing a Vietnam War veteran and police chief of an unnamed city on Hill Street Blues, a role he played until 1987, and was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in 1984.
He based the character on a drill instructor he met while in basic training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
“The drill instructor had hair like steel and his uniform had so much starch on it, I knew when he took it off in the barracks it would be in a corner,” he said. Fresno Bee in 2014. “So when I started playing Howard, I decided how I was going to dress him. It had to be very military-like.”
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Following his success on the show, Sicking starred as the father of Neil Patrick Harris’ character in the medical comedy Doogie Howser, which aired from 1989 to 1993.
“I remember it fondly,” Harris said. He told USA TODAY in 2019. “It was such an amazing, amazing chapter for me, having never been in the entertainment industry before.”
Sicking also appeared in films, playing Captain Styles in Star Trek III: The Search for Mr. Mister in 1984 and the Director of the FBI in The Pelican Brief in 1993. Over the course of his career, the actor starred in four films directed by Peter Hyams, including Capricon One, Outland, The Star Chamber, and Narrow Margin.
Sicking is survived by his wife of more than 60 years, Florine Kaplan, and his two children, son Andrew and daughter Emily.
