What is O.J. Simpson famous for – Kommersant

11 April died former athlete and actor OJ Simpson. The life and career of a sports star, who became famous, among other things, for her problems with the law, is in the Kommersant certificate.

Orenthal James Simpson was born on July 9, 1947 in San Francisco. His father left the family early, and the future athlete was raised by his mother, who worked as an administrator at a hospital. In his youth, O. J. Simpson mixed with bad company and had problems with the law, but there were no serious consequences.

Already in high school, he attracted attention with his outstanding play in American football. In 1967, as a member of the University of Southern California team, he won first place in the US Championship. In 1968, he won the Heisman Trophy as the best player on the university team, after which he switched to professional sports. He received the nickname Juice, as his initials OJ were associated with orange juice.

He was the first overall pick in the 1969 National Football League draft. From 1969 to 1977 he played for the Buffalo Bills, then for two more years with the San Francisco 49ers.

The athlete became one of the top stars in the NFL – a six-time NFL All-Star, he was named to the league’s first All-Star team five times, was included in the Professional American Football Hall of Fame and the NFL’s Team of the Decade. He holds the record for most yards per game average in a single season. In 1973, Juice was named NFL Athlete of the Year and Most Valuable Player.

In 1979, he retired from sports and worked for ABC and NBC television channels as a sports commentator and analyst. Back in the 1970s, he began appearing on television and in films as an actor, and his most famous role was Detective Northberg from the Naked Gun trilogy.

In 1989, the athlete’s wife Nicole Brown called the police by phone, saying that her husband wanted to kill her. He stood trial on charges of beating his wife and was ordered to pay a $200 fine, donate $500 to a domestic violence shelter, and perform 120 hours of community service.

In 1994, he was accused of murdering his now ex-wife Nicole Brown-Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. Although DNA evidence placed OJ Simpson at the crime scene and his ex-wife’s blood was found in his car and on his sock, a jury found him not guilty in 1995. O. J. Simpson himself denied guilt.

The Simpson case became the most media-rich trial in the United States. American television networks estimate that over 100 million people watched the announcement of the verdict. In 1997, during a civil trial, the jury found the former athlete guilty and ordered him to pay the relatives of the victims $33.5 million.

In 2007, O. J. Simpson published the book If I Did It: Confessions of a Killer, written by a hired author based on an interview with a former athlete. In it, OJ Simpson describes the “hypothetical” murder of Nicole Brown-Simpson and Ronald Goldman if he had actually done it, which he never admitted. The rights to the book were given to the family of the deceased Ronald Goldman.

In 2008, O. J. Simpson was sentenced to 33 years in prison for breaking into a sports trophy collector’s Las Vegas hotel room with his friends in September 2007 and forcibly taking the trophies that previously belonged to him. The collector claimed that Simpson and his accomplices took possession of the sports awards by threatening him with a revolver.

The former athlete was pardoned in June 2017 and was released from prison in October of the same year. In February 2024, it became known that O. J. Simpson was being treated for prostate cancer.