Jeff Conaway

Jeffrey Charles William Michael Conaway (October 5, 1950 – May 27, 2011) was an American actor.

He portrayed Kenickie in the film Grease and had roles in two television series: struggling actor Bobby Wheeler in Taxi and security officer Zack Allan on Babylon 5.

Conaway was featured in the first and second seasons of the reality television series Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.

Conaway was born on October 5, 1950, in Manhattan, New York, and raised in the Astoria, Flushing, and Forest Hills neighborhoods of Queens.

His father, Charles, was an actor, producer, and publisher.

His mother, Helen, an actress who went by the stage name Mary Ann Brooks, taught music at New York City's Brook Conservatory.

They divorced when he was 3, and Conaway and his two older sisters lived with their mother.

He also spent time living with his grandparents in South Carolina, which gave him enough of a Southern accent that when he accompanied his mother to a casting call for director Arthur Penn's Broadway play All the Way Home, a story set in Knoxville, Tennessee, the 10-year-old Conaway landed a featured role as one of four boys.

The 1961 Pulitzer Prize-winning play was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play and ran 333 performances and one preview from November 29, 1960, to September 16, 1961.

Conaway remained for the entire run, then toured with the national company of the play Critic's Choice.

Conaway worked as a child model, and attended high school at the Quintano School for Young Professionals.

After playing with the rock band 3 1⁄2 beginning at age 15, he attended the North Carolina School of the Arts and later transferred to New York University.

While at NYU, Conaway appeared in television commercials and had the lead in a school production of The Threepenny Opera.

In the mid-1960s, he was the lead singer and guitarist for a rock band, The 3 1⁄2, which recorded four singles for Cameo Records in 1966 and 1967:

He made his film debut in the 1971 romantic drama Jennifer on My Mind, which also featured future stars Robert De Niro and Barry Bostwick.

The following year, Conaway appeared in the original cast of the Broadway musical Grease, as an understudy to several roles including that of the lead male character, Danny Zuko, and eventually succeeded role-originator Barry Bostwick.

He played the role for 2 1⁄2 years while his friend John Travolta, with whom he shared a manager, later joined the show, playing the supporting role of Doody.

After breaking into series television in 1975 with Happy Days, followed by guest spots in several other TV shows, and three more films including Grease, he was cast as aspiring actor Bobby Wheeler on Taxi, which premiered in fall 1978.

The two would reunite in the 1978 motion picture musical Grease, in which Travolta played Zuko and Conaway his buddy Kenickie.

In 1979, Conaway recorded a self-titled debut album for Columbia Records.

"City Boy" was released as a single.

Bruce Springsteen's manager, Mike Appel, produced the album.

Conaway starred in the short-lived 1983 fantasy-spoof series Wizards and Warriors.

He made guest appearances on such shows as Barnaby Jones, George & Leo, and Murder, She Wrote.

He appeared in films such as Jawbreaker, Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, and Do You Wanna Know a Secret?

He had appeared in an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show for the same producers, and, he said in 1987, had been considered for the role of John Burns, which eventually went to Randall Carver:"But then one day I got the whole script and became real interested in the actor character, then called Bobby Taylor. And [the producers] said they had been thinking along the same lines, so I read again. Later I got a call from [original casting director] Joel Thurm, who says, 'Well, it's not good news, but it's not bad news either.' He says I'm the only choice for a white actor, but that they'd had a meeting and thought that maybe Bobby should be black and that now they're looking at black actors. ... So I went back to read, and it was me, Cleavon Little, and somebody else.... I ended up reading with [star] Judd Hirsch and it went really well.""

Conaway left Taxi after the third season.

Part of the reason was his drug abuse after season one.

From 1989 to 1990, he played Mick Savage on The Bold and the Beautiful.

In 1993, he appeared onstage in Real Life Photographs.

From 1994 to 1999, he played Sergeant, later promoted to Security Chief, Zack Allan on Babylon 5.

In 2000, he released the album It Don't Make Sense You Can't Make Peace on the KEGMusic label.

Taxi writer Sam Simon recalled in 2008 that during production of Simon's first script for that show, a missing Conaway was found in his dressing room too high on drugs to perform.

Conaway's dialogue for that episode was divided between his co-stars Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd, who delivered the jokes well enough so that Conaway's absence had little negative effect on the episode.

This development caused the show's producers to realize that Conaway was expendable and this contributed to his termination.

Conaway was reported at the time to be dissatisfied with being typecast as a "blond bimbo" and the "butt of struggling-actor jokes," along with finding the nature of the role repetitive.

He also felt creatively stymied:

"I wanted to do things with Bobby, but as the show went on, I could see I wasn't going to get that chance ... Lemme tell you – I loved Bobby, I identified with Bobby. So, yeah, I kind of took everything personally. I had a lot of meetings with [the producers] because I was unhappy ... Sure, partially it was ego, but let me do what I do best. It was frustrating. I remember leaving the studio feeling guilty and unhappy. I just couldn't appreciate it and use it as just a job, as a learning experience. Instead I saw it as, 'Hey, anybody could do this character.' Like nobody else could do Louie or Jim, they were such defined characters. But Bobby – anybody could walk in and say, 'Hi, Alex.'""

In 2010 he provided voice-over for the English version of the animated short film Dante's Hell Animated (released in 2013), in which he is credited as "Hollywood legend Jeff Conaway".

In addition to acting, Conaway dabbled in music.