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?”
TOPICS: Quantum Leap (2022 Series), Battlestar Galactica (2004), JAG, Dean Stockwell, Scott Bakula, Obits