R. Lee Ermey, Golden Globe Nominee for ‘Full Metal Jacket,’ Dies at 74

The news was announced via his official Twitter account by his longtime manager.

R. Lee Ermey, a Golden Globe-nominated actor best known for his role as Gunnery Sgt. Hartman in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, has died.

Ermey, whose nickname was “The Gunny,” died Sunday morning from complications of pneumonia. He was 74.

The news was announced via his official twitter account by his longtime manager, Bill Rogin.

Both March 24, 1944, in Emporia, Kan., Ermey not only played a member of the military in the movies, but he also was one in real life, having been a U.S. Marine Corps staff sergeant and an honorary gunnery sergeant. He also served as a drill instructor for the Marines. Ermey also served 14 months in Vietnam and completed two tours in Okinawa, Japan

After retiring from the military with 11 years of service under his belt, Ermey took some acting classes and was cast in one of his first roles, playing a helicopter pilot in 1979’s Apocalypse Now, and also serving as a technical adviser to director Francis Ford Coppola on the film. Another role he landed around that same time also hit close to home, playing a Marine drill instructor in Sidney Furie’s The Boys in Company C.

His role in Kubrick’s 1987 film Full Metal Jacket gave him some memorable lines, including: “What is your major malfunction numbnuts? Didn’t mommy and daddy show you enough attention when you were a child?” and “I want that head so sanitary and squared away that the Virgin Mary herself would be proud to go in there and take a dump.”

Other films credits include Mississippi Burning, Prefontaine, the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Fletch Lives, Se7en. He also had a healthy voice-over career, playing the lead of the green plastic Army solders in the Toy Story films along with a role in SpongeBob SquarePants, among others.

More recently, he hosted Outdoor Channel’s GunnyTime With R. Lee Ermey