Brett Halsey
Brett Halsey (born Charles Oliver Hand; June 20, 1933) is an American actor known for B movies, European films, and for originating the role of John Abbott on The Young and the Restless from 1980 to 1981. He sometimes used the stage name Montgomery Ford.
He is a great-nephew of U.S. Navy Admiral William F. Halsey Jr., and Universal Pictures chose his screen name from the admiral. Halsey has wanted to act since childhood. He worked as a page at CBS, where he met Jack Benny and Mary Livingstone, who introduced him to William Goetz, head of Universal, leading to acting opportunities.
Halsey served in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War as a disc jockey.
In the 1950s, he appeared in many TV Westerns and films, including Brave Eagle, Gunsmoke, Mackenzie’s Raiders, Highway Patrol, Harbor Command, Perry Mason, The Cry Baby Killer, The Atomic Submarine, Five Fingers, Return of the Fly, Jet Over the Atlantic, The Best of Everything, Return to Peyton Place, and Twice-Told Tales.
In the early 1960s he moved to Italy, where he found work as a swashbuckling hero in adventurous films, Spaghetti Westerns, and Eurospy movies. Notable titles include Seven Swords for the King, The Avenger of Venice, Espionage in Lisbon, Kill Johnny Ringo, Today We Kill, Tomorrow We Die!, All on the Red, Twenty Thousand Dollars for Seven, and Roy Colt and Winchester Jack. He sometimes used the name Montgomery Ford during this period.
He returned to the United States in the early 1970s and worked in film and television, with appearances on General Hospital and Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, and in the film Where Does It Hurt? with Peter Sellers. He later had roles in Ratboy (1986) and The Godfather Part III (1990), and collaborated with Italian horror director Lucio Fulci on The Devil’s Honey (1986), Touch of Death (1988), A Cat in the Brain (1990), and Demonia (1990). He also appeared in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and Columbo.
Personal life: Halsey has been married four times. He married Renate Hoy in 1954; they had two children, Charles Oliver Hand Jr. and Tracy Leigh, before divorcing in 1959. Their son Charles, known as Rock Halsey, was in the punk band Rock Bottom & The Spys and was murdered in prison while serving a 25-year sentence for drug crimes. He married Luciana Paluzzi from 1960 to 1962, and they had one son, Christian. In 1964 he married German actress-singer Heidi Brühl; they had two children, Clayton Alexander Siegfried and Nicole, and they divorced in 1976. Toward the end of the 1990s he moved to San José, Costa Rica to teach acting, and later lived in Laguna Hills, California, with his fourth wife, Victoria Korda, the granddaughter of Alexander Korda. He continues to write and make occasional film appearances.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 01:16 (CET).