Answer: Richard Dean Anderson

Richard Dean Anderson is an impressive television actor in that he not only made a household name for himself once, but three times over and even earned an honorary military rank along the way.

Anderson’s first TV acting gig and a well known role to boot, was that of Dr. Jeff Webber on the iconic soap opera General Hospital (1976-1981). Later, between 1985 and 1992 he was the eponymous MacGyver of fix-it-with-paperclips-and-duct-tape fame. Finally, in our trio of memorable roles, he was Colonel Jack O’Neill (promoted to Lieutenant General by the end of the series) in the hit Sci-Fi show Stargate SG-1—a series focused on the exploits of a U.S. Air Force team tasked with exploring the universe using an ancient alien technology that links planets and galaxies together with wormholes.

In honor of his role in Stargate SG-1 and because of how positively Anderson and the show portrayed the Air Force, both in its role as a pivotal organization in contacting alien species and the maturity and ethics in which the team was portrayed in doing so, the Air Force awarded Anderson the honorary rank of Brigadier General.