Bernie Kopell

Bernie Kopell—now there’s a guy who’s seen it all in Hollywood. Most people still remember him as Dr. Adam Bricker, that charming doc from The Love Boat, handing out advice and sailing through ten seasons like it was just another day at the office (and yeah, he called it a “paid vacation,” which honestly? Goals). But way before he was making house calls on the high seas, Bernie was cracking people up as Siegfried, the hilarious KAOS chief on Get Smart—a role that’s just burned into TV history. Born in Brooklyn to Ukrainian-Jewish parents, Bernie was a New Yorker through and through. He finished up at NYU in ‘55, then did a stint in the Navy. The guy was a librarian on the USS Iowa, and he actually loved it—said he read more books there than he ever did in college. Classic Bernie. After his Navy days, LA came calling thanks to a college buddy. It wasn’t all red carpets and limos at first—he worked as a cabbie and a vacuum cleaner salesman until he lucked into a soap opera gig, playing a Cuban bad guy. His knack for accents meant he got typecast as every ethnicity under the sun, but the dude just kept hustling, popping up in everything from Bewitched to McHale’s Navy. Eventually, he nailed the Siegfried gig, totally ran with it, and became a TV icon. Even after Get Smart and Love Boat, Bernie just kept popping up everywhere—comedies, dramas, you name it.