Paul Gleason: Breakfast Club Actor

”Don’t Mess With the Bull”

For anyone who grew up in the 1980s, Paul Gleason’s face is unforgettable. As Assistant Principal Richard Vernon in John Hughes’ 1985 classic “The Breakfast Club,” Gleason created one of cinema’s most memorable antagonists—a petty authoritarian who saw the worst in his students while revealing his own insecurities.

“Don’t mess with the bull, young man, you’ll get the horns,” Vernon warns Judd Nelson’s rebellious John Bender. The line became iconic, and so did Gleason’s portrayal of the frustrated, bitter administrator.

A Working Actor’s Life

Born May 4, 1939, in Jersey City, New Jersey, Paul Xavier Gleason built his career the old-fashioned way—one role at a time. After studying acting in New York, he worked steadily in television throughout the 1970s, appearing in episodes of “All in the Family,” “Friends” (playing a different character than his later, better-known role), and dozens of other series.

His film breakthrough came with “Trading Places” (1983), where he played Clarence Beeks, the villainous henchman who gets his comeuppance. But it was “The Breakfast Club” that made him a household face, if not always a household name.

More Than One Role

Gleason worked constantly throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He appeared in “Die Hard” (1988) as the arrogant Deputy Police Chief Dwayne T. Robinson, providing comic relief as he clashes with Bruce Willis’s John McClane. He had recurring roles on “Friends” and “Malcolm in the Middle.”

What set Gleason apart was his ability to make authority figures both threatening and pathetic—never quite villains, but never sympathetic either. He brought humanity to characters that lesser actors might have played as one-dimensional.

A Private Battle

Paul Gleason was diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma, the aggressive cancer caused by asbestos exposure. The specific source of his exposure has never been publicly documented, but like many of his generation, Gleason came of age when asbestos was everywhere—in buildings, on film sets, in the materials of everyday life.

Gleason kept his diagnosis private, continuing to work as long as he could. His final credited role was in the TV series “The Young and the Restless” in 2006.

Final Days

On May 27, 2006, Paul Gleason died at Glendale Memorial Hospital in California. He was 67 years old. His death was attributed to pleural mesothelioma.

The entertainment industry mourned the loss of a consummate character actor—someone who made every production better simply by showing up. Judd Nelson, his sparring partner in “The Breakfast Club,” praised Gleason’s professionalism and humor on set.

Legacy

More than three decades after its release, “The Breakfast Club” remains a touchstone of American cinema. It’s been preserved by the Library of Congress as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” And Paul Gleason’s performance as the petty, insecure, ultimately human Vice Principal Vernon remains as fresh and infuriating as ever.

For those who remember him as the authority figure they loved to hate, Gleason’s death from mesothelioma serves as a reminder that asbestos didn’t discriminate. It affected working-class laborers and Hollywood actors alike, often striking decades after the original exposure.

Remembering Paul Gleason

Paul Gleason may have specialized in playing jerks, but by all accounts, he was nothing like his characters. Colleagues remembered him as warm, professional, and genuinely funny. He understood that playing unlikable characters was an art form—and that audiences needed someone to root against.

His death at 67 cut short a career that still had much to offer. But through “The Breakfast Club” and his many other roles, Paul Gleason’s work endures—a reminder of his talent and of the generation of artists who worked in an era when no one knew what was in the walls.