Background
Jerry Ziesmer was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to a postal employee and his wife, who was the daughter of Dutch immigrants.
Jerry Ziesmer was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to a postal employee and his wife, who was the daughter of Dutch immigrants.
He graduated on a scholarship from Milwaukee"s Rufus King High School in 1957.
He received a bachelor"s degree in acting from Northwestern University in 1961. After graduation he moved to Beverly Hills and took a job as a United States Post Office employee and later, a part-time junior high school teacher. He later obtained a master"s degree from University of California, Los Los Angeles He received a Directors Guild training certificate for assistant directors in 1969, applying to the program after reading an advertisement in Variety Magazine.
Ziesmer worked on more than 50 films, usually in the role of assistant director
His first uncredited film job was as a trainee in Hello, Dolly!. His credits include The Way We Were, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Scarface, Illegally Yours, Midnight Run, History of the World, Participant I, Annie, Say Anything, Almost Famous, and Jerry Maguire.
He took small acting parts in some of his films, for example playing a pilot in Blue Thunder and a salesman in Rocky World War II His most famous role is as a civilian intelligence agent named "Jerry" in Francis Ford Coppola"s Vietnam War film, Apocalypse Now, in which he utters what some call the film"s most memorable line, "Terminate, with extreme prejudice", to instruct the film"s lead character to carry out an assassination. Coppola, who had searched for a suitable actor for months, gave the role to Ziesmer at the spur of the moment.
In 1981, Ziesmer re-met and began dating his high school girlfriend and 1957 prom date, Suzanne.
Suzanne joined him on-set, tutoring actors including Mel Gibson. In 2000 Ziesmer wrote a memoir, Ready when You Are, Mr. Coppola, Mr. Spielberg, Mr.
Crowe, that includes the most complete account of the production of Apocalypse Now.
Ziesmer served on the council of the Directors Guild of America from 1987 to 1998, for three years as the chairman He helped establish a mentorship program for women and minority directors.
