It's a death sentence,' Osmond told radio host Stu Stoshak in a 2008 interview on 'Stu's Show.' 'I'm not complaining because Eddie's been too good to me, but I found work hard to come by.

He would soon give up acting and become a Los Angeles police officer for more than a decade. Want more of our free, weekly newsletters in your inbox? Let’s get started. He got his first role at age 4, working in commercials and as a film extra, and got his first speaking role at 9, appearing mostly in small guest parts on TV series.

Osmond was born in Glendale, Calif., to a carpenter father and a mother who wanted to get him into acting. 'I have always said that he was the best actor on our show because in real life his personality was so opposite of the character that he so brilliantly portrayed,' Mathers said on Twitter. Mathers said he will greatly miss his friend of 63 years. 'He was one of the few guys on the show who really played a character and created it,' Dow added, chuckling as he mimicked the evil laugh Osmond would unleash when his character was launching one nefarious scheme or another and trying to pull Wally and his younger brother Beaver into it. “He was a terrific guy, he was a terrific actor and his character is probably one that will last forever,” Dow told the Associated Press on May 18.

He was the closest thing the wholesome show had to a villain, and viewers of all ages loved to hate him.

He constantly kissed up to adults, flattering and flirting with Wally and Beaver's mother, and kicked down at his peers, usually in the same scene. Ken Osmond's Eddie Haskell stood out among many memorable characters on the classic family sitcom 'Leave it to Beaver,' which ran from 1957 to 1963 on CBS and ABC, but had a decades-long life of reruns and revivals.Įddie was the best friend of Tony Dow's Wally Cleaver, big brother to Jerry Mathers' Beaver Cleaver.

Leave it to beaver actors