Tiny Ron Taylor

Ronald "Tiny Ron" Taylor (born November 21, 1947) is an American film actor and former basketball player. He is possibly best known as Lothar in The Rocketeer (1991) and as Roc in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994), roles that exploited his 7 ft (2.13 m) frame and craggy features. He also played Al, the tall police detective whose face is never seen, in The Naked Gun (1988) and on the TV series Police Squad!. He has also appeared on television, including seven episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as the Hupyrian manservant Maihar'du, and two episodes of Star Trek: Voyager as the Hirogen alpha Idrin.

Taylor was born in Torrance, California. Tiny Ron's nickname was given to him by an acting teacher when he applied to the Screen Actors Guild, since the name "Ron Taylor" was already in use by another actor. His teacher figured that in a niche category populated by actors with such screen names as "André the Giant," the name "Tiny Ron" would stand out.

Tiny Ron attended North Torrance High School and graduated from the University of Southern California. He played professional basketball in the ABA and in Austria in the 1970s before starting his film career. He was drafted by the Seattle SuperSonics in the second round of the 1969 NBA Draft, but never played in the NBA.

Ron Taylor

Ron Taylor may refer to:

Ron & Valerie Taylor

Ron Josiah Taylor, AM (8 March 1934 – 9 September 2012) was a prominent Australian shark expert, as is his wife, Valerie May Taylor née Heighes, AM (born 9 November 1935). Their expertise has been called upon for films such as Jaws, Orca and Sky Pirates.

Biography

Ron began diving in 1952, become interested in spearfishing and underwater photography and in 1965, he won the World Spearfishing Championship in Tahiti after winning the Australian Open Spearfishing Championships for four years in succession. Valerie was born in Sydney, started diving in 1956 and spearfishing in 1960, eventually winning several Australian championships for ladies in both spearfishing and scuba. The couple met while both were members of the St George Spearfishing Club in Sydney. They became champion spearfishers, but switched from killing sharks to filming them after becoming fascinated with marine life. They married in December 1963 at Hurstville, N.S.W., and had no children. They made their living in the 1960s by making wet suits and selling underwater cameras, plus doing artwork for magazines. The Taylors were credited with being pioneers in several areas — the first people to film great white sharks without the protection of a cage or anything else during the making of the (released on video) series Blue Wilderness in January 1992, a huge milestone in ocean exploration together with South Africans George Askew and Piet van der Walt, founders of the South African great white shark cage diving industry. They also filmed the shark sequences for the film Orca. The Taylors were also the first to film sharks by night.

Ron Taylor (author)

Ronald W. "Ron" Taylor is an American author, speaker, consultant and musician. He is known for his expertise in leadership and project management. He has been married to his wife, Yvonne, since 1989 and has a son Chris, who is a civil engineer.

Education

Ron Taylor was born in Washington, DC and moved to California at the age of six. He attended Somis Elementary School and then Adolfo Camarillo High School, where he was accepted into the prestigious California Scholarship Federation. After graduation, he attended Ventura College (then Ventura Junior College) for a year and moved with his family to Lexington, Kentucky. He paid for his education at the University of Kentucky by working for the U.S. Post Office, earning first an undergraduate degree in Business Administration and then an MBA.

Career in academia and government

After receiving his MBA, Taylor began teaching at the University of Kentucky, where he was nominated Best Teacher of the Year. He then accepted a position at the U.S. Bureau of the Census. During his career, he received numerous awards for outstanding service, chaired both the Management and Economics curricula at the International Programs Center, and was a member of the Bureau's Project Management Board of Directors.