R Lee Ermey death: Watch his iconic Full Metal Jacket drill sergeant scene

R. Lee Ermey - Hollywood's greatest drill sergeant - has died aged 74.

Of course, no role of his will be as vividly remembered as Full Metal Jacket's Gunnery Sgt. Hartman, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination; a performance at its most impressive in the film's iconic opening scene.

The actor was originally brought on as a technical advisor for Stanley Kubrick's 1987 film, but was promoted to the role after filming his own audition tape of him yelling out insults while tennis balls flew at him.

It was one of the rare performances that Kubrick ever allowed to be improvised, with Kubrick telling Rolling Stone that 50 percent of Ermey's dialogue was his own. "In the course of hiring the marine recruits, we interviewed hundreds of guys. We lined them all up and did an improvisation of the first meeting with the drill instructor," he said of the decision.

"They didn't know what he was going to say, and we could see how they reacted. Lee came up with, I don't know, 150 pages of insults."

Ermey himself was a former Marine, serving 11 years and spending 14 months in Vietnam and then in Okinawa, Japan, where he became staff sergeant. His first film credit was as a helicopter pilot in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, followed by a part in the Boys in Company C as a drill instructor.

He raked in more than 60 credits in film and television, from the likes of Se7en and X-Men 3, to Toy Story and Sponge Bob Squarepants.

His Full Metal Jacket co-stars Matthew Modine and Vincent D'Onofrio tweeted their condolences. "#SemperFidelis Always faithful. Always loyal. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light," Modine wrote, quoting the Dylan Thomas poem. "RIP amigo. PVT. Joker."

Vincent D'Onofrio added: "Ermey was the real deal. The knowledge of him passing brings back wonderful memories of our time together."

Ermey's longtime manager Bill Rogin has said the actor died Sunday morning from pneumonia-related complications.

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