Cliff Simon has died aged just 58 after a tragic kiteboarding accident. The South African born star’s death was announced yesterday on Facebook, with his wife Collette sharing her “unimaginable heartbreak”.
She wrote: “To friends, family and fans, it is with unimaginable heartbreak that I am sharing with you, that my beloved husband, Cliff Simon, passed away at 12:30pm on Tuesday, March 9, 2021.
“He was at Topanga Beach, California and sadly passed away after a tragic kiteboarding accident.
“He was known to most of you on this page as the villain you loved to hate, Ba’al, from Stargate SG-1. But as he said, ‘Acting is what I do, it’s only a part of who I am’.
“And he was SO much more — a true original, an adventurer, a sailor, swimmer, dancer, actor, author.
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In a 2005 interview with The Sci-Fi World, Simon claimed that he met with the Stargate SG-1 producers eight months before the character Ba’al was created.
The meeting went so well that executives, Robert C. Cooper and Brad Wright, decided to keep Simon on hold until they had created his alter ego.
The series was a spin-off of the 1994 science fiction film Stargate, in which the United States government discovers the title devices, which could transport users to other worlds in the blink of an eye.
Simon was such a hit with fans that he was brought back for the film Stargate: Continuum to wrap up the series, even though most of the characters of his race were no longer featured in the series by the end.
Simon was originally born in Johannesburg, South Africa, to Jewish parents from Poland and Lithuania.
As a young man, he was a swimmer and continued to pursue his Olympic goals after moving with his family to the UK in 1975.
In the mid-1980s he moved to the US to continue his training, but he later returned to South Africa and enlisted in the country’s Air Force.
The future actor focused on his passion for water sports after leaving the Air Force, by teaching water-skiing and windsurfing.