Former American football star and Hollywood actor OJ Simpson has died at the age of 76 after a prolonged battle with cancer.
The family took to Simpson’s official X account to announce that he died Wednesday of prostate cancer. He died in Las Vegas, officials there said Thursday.
On April 10th, our father, Orenthal James Simpson, succumbed to his battle with cancer.
He was surrounded by his children and grandchildren.
During this time of transition, his family asks that you please respect their wishes for privacy and grace.
-The Simpson Family
— O.J. Simpson (@TheRealOJ32) April 11, 2024
Simpson earned fame, fortune and adulation through football and show business, but his legacy was forever changed by the June 1994 knife slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman in Los Angeles. The jury found him not guilty of murder in 1995, but a separate civil trial jury found him liable in 1997 for the deaths and ordered him to pay $33.5 million to relatives of Brown and Goldman.
The trial, broadcast live and watched by millions worldwide, left a lasting impression on public discourse and media coverage.
He was later convicted in 2008 for armed robbery and kidnapping in a separate case, serving nine years before being released on parole in 2017.
Simpson played 11 NFL seasons, nine of them with the Buffalo Bills, where he became known as “The Juice” and ran behind an offensive line known as “The Electric Company”. He won four NFL rushing titles, rushed for 11,236 yards in his career, scored 76 touchdowns and played in five Pro Bowls. His best season was 1973, when he ran for 2,003 yards — the first running back to break the 2,000-yard rushing mark.
Simpson made his big-screen debut in 1974’s “The Klansman”, an exploitation film in which he starred alongside Lee Marvin and Richard Burton. The film flopped, but Simpson would go on to appear in several dozen films and TV series, including 1974’s “The Towering Inferno”, 1976’s “The Cassandra Crossing”, 1977’s “Roots”, 1977’s “Capricorn One”, and 1988’s “The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad” and two sequels. Simpson played Detective Nordberg in the slapstick films, opposite Leslie Nielsen.
Simpson leaves four living children, Arnelle and Jason, both aged in their 50s, from his first marriage to Marguerite Whitley; and Sydney, 38, and Justin, 35, with Brown. Aaren Simpson, whom he shared with Whitley, drowned in the family swimming pool in 1979, weeks before her second birthday.
