Athletes Acting: Jim Brown

Every Thursday, Athletes Acting looks at different athletes who've tried their hand at acting, with different degrees of success. Today, we look at a man who was a star in both fields.

Jim Brown is an anomaly in terms of athlete actors. Where most athletes have trouble acting, and a few successful action stars and character actors also had marginal athletic careers, Brown was a star in both realms, which is one of the many reasons he's awesome.

He was almost certainly the best player of his generation, and is often included in the discussion of the greatest players of all-time. He was selected to the Pro Bowl in all nine of his seasons with the Cleveland Browns, winning the league rushing title in eight of them, and was the NFL MVP in 1957, 1958 and 1965.

Then, still very much in his prime, he retired from football at age 29 to pursue acting full-time. While his acting career wasn't quite as distinguished as his football career, it was still very respectable. He was best known as an action hero, thanks to his work in movies like Ice Station Zebra and The Dirty Dozen, but also did some serious dramatic work in tick...tick...tick, tackled comedy in I'm Gonna Git You, Sucka, and, most importantly, took part in one of the first interracial love scenes in mainstream cinema, getting it on with Raquel Welch in 1969's 100 Rifles.