Background
James Jackson Bullock was born in Casper, Wyoming, and raised in Odessa, Texas, in a Southern Baptist home.
James Jackson Bullock was born in Casper, Wyoming, and raised in Odessa, Texas, in a Southern Baptist home.
Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute.
He is a comedian of stage, television and motion pictures. As a youth, Bullock planned to study to become an evangelical Christian minister. He received a music scholarship to attend Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee, Oklahoma, but left school without graduating.
Bullock became a notable entertainment figure in the 1980s when he co-starred on the sitcom Too Close for Comfort (credited as "Jm J Bullock") and was a regular "square" on John Davidson"s updated version of Hollywood Squares (1986–1989), also substituting for Davidson as host on occasion.
He also appeared as a semi-regular on Battlestars. He later became a semi-regular on ALF (from 1989 to 1990) as Neal Tanner.
After the sitcom went off the air, Bullock remained active with theatre, television, and film work. He briefly hosted a syndicated talk show with ex-televangelist Tammy Faye Messner.
The and Tammy Faye Show debuted in 1996, but Messner exited the program a few months later following a cancer diagnosis.
Bullock continued with new co-host, Ann Abernathy, and the show became The and Ann Show until it was canceled. Bullock was the voice of Queer Duck in the animated series of cartoons of the same name which have appeared on both the internet and the cable television network Showtime. In 2000, Bullock was a regular panelist on the revival of I"ve Got a Secret.
He also performed on the national tour of the Broadway production Hairspray as Wilbur Turnblad, a role he took to the Broadway stage starting September 18, 2007.
Some of his other noteworthy roles include the pilled-up narcoleptic Prince Valium in the 1987 Mel Brooks movie Spaceballs, and the "Not-Quite-Out-of-the-Closet" character in the date montage at the beginning of 2001"s Kissing Jessica Stein. In 1985, while Too Close Foreign Comfort was being retooled as The Ted Knight Show, Bullock learned that he was Human Immunodeficiency Virus positive.
In a 1985 appearance on the game show Body Language, host Tom Kennedy described him as looking "like you"re in the pink of health and all of that", to which a flustered Bullock responded "I"m, I"m..no, I"m about to die, actually. But let"s not talk about that now, Oklahoma? Fabulous." Kennedy then remarked that "If you"ve got about four days left in you, we"ll make it till Thursday", and Bullock replied "I"ve got four days, yeah." Bullock is a longtime survivor of the virus and, as of 2011, was still healthy due in part to antiretroviral drugs.
On February 17, 1999, Bullock was arrested outside a bar in West Hollywood, California, for possession of crystal methodist
He received probation as a result.