Entertainment
David Hasselhoff at 70: The life and career of the Baywatch icon-Jennifer McShane-Entertainment – Metro
The Baywatch star has had quite a life.
The Baywatch star turns the big 7-0 (Picture: Rex)
David Hasselhoff celebrates a landmark birthday as he turns 70, and he’s had quite the life.
We take a look back at the life and times of the small screen icon, ‘The Hoff,’ as he marks 70 years as an actor, singer and entertainer. Famous for cult classics Baywatch and Knight Rider, he’s also enjoyed a career as a pop star and was in Germany performing a concert the night The Berlin Wall fell.
Born July 17 1952 in Baltimore, he attended the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Michigan before flying to the west coast to take continue at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia.
Here’s a look at the life and times of The Hoff:
David Hasselhoff’s famous movies and TV shows
Knight Rider
The Hoff became an icon thanks to the 80s series (Picture: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock)
Persistence in his training paid off and he soon landed a regular role as Snapper Foster on the soap opera, The Young and The Restless, in 1973.
Nine years after his early break on the small screen, The Hoff moved on to primetime television as his now infamous crime-busting protagonist on the 1982 show, Knight Rider, and it’s this and a certain beach-surfing series that would ensure his long-term success and fortune.
He played the title character Michael Knight, and its success turned him into a bona-fide superstar. The series is considered a cult classic.
Baywatch
Baywatch cemented his icon status (Picture: Fremantle Media/REX/Shutterstock)
Following his breakout role on Knight Rider, the 70-year-old decided to head back to the small screen with Baywatch in 1989. Starring alongside Carmen Electra, Yasmine Bleeth, and Pamela Anderson, the show quickly also received a cult following, despite it being cancelled after its first season.
The Baywatch star actor knew better though, and at 37, he invested his own money to give the series another chance in 1991.
The actor was 37 when he decided to invest his own money in the series after it was cancelled after a season (Picture: Fremantle Media/REX/Shutterstock)
The show covered three decades, from the ‘80s to the ‘00s, and also launched a couple of spin-off series, Baywatch Nights and Baywatch Hawaii. When it ended in 2001, nearly a billion viewers around the globe tuned in for the series finale.
There were a number of Baywatch spin-offs, including Baywatch Hawaii (Picture: Mark Reinstein/REX/Shutterstock)
There was even a movie made based on the hit show. And because the actor had invested his own money into the series, he earned rerun royalties, garnering him a fortune throughout the years.
Zaf Efron starred in the 2017 film remake of the cult series (Picture: BACKGRID)
Film and beyond
The Hoff has also appeared in several movies. He played the lead role in the 1988 Italian horror film ‘Witchery’, which was directed by Fabrizio Laurenti. In 1991, he appeared in the TV movie ‘Knight Rider 2000’ based on his work in the smash series.
Following Baywatch, he made his Broadway debut playing the title character in the production of Jekyll & Hyde. This proved popular and opened up the doors of many theatre productions, which included an infamous 2007 role in The Producers in Las Vegas.
David enjoyed four seasons as a judge on America’s Got Talent (Picture: Nbc-Tv/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock)
In 2006, he once again made his TV comeback, this time as one of the judges in America’s Got Talent. Together with Piers Morgan and Sharon Osbourne, he stayed for four seasons. He also starred in one season of his reality show The Hasselhoffs.
The Berlin Wall
Outside of his acting career, as a rock singer The Hoff has amassed a frenzied following in Europe, with gold records in places like Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
In 1985, having always been a singer from a young age, he released his debut album Night Rocker. It made a lot of noise in Europe and went number one on the Austrian albums chart and went top twenty on the German albums chart.
He released several other studio albums over the next few years including Looking for Freedom (1989), David (1991) and Everybody Sunshine (1992) with the most recent album released in 2012.
It was the track of the same name from his album Looking for Freedom that cemented his status as a ‘rock God’, as he’s been called. He sang the song outside Brandenburg Gate on New Year’s Eve 1989, hovering in a bucket crane over a crowd of thousands who celebrated the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
The rockstar has tied the knot three times. He married actress Catherine Hickland in March 1984 and they divorced after five years.
His second wife was actress Pamela Bach. They married in 1989 and had two daughters. The couple called it quits in 2006. He married third wife Hayley Roberts, 41, in a lavish ceremony in Puglia, Italy in 2018.
He tied the knot with third wife Hayley Roberts in 2019 (Picture: Arnold Jerocki/WireImage)
David had hesitated over marrying Hayley initially, worrying that he ‘didn’t think it was right’ to marry her as he was ‘so much older’ before the pair decided to take the plunge.
The ‘cheeseburger incident’
It hasn’t always been smooth sailing for the star who battled alcoholism throughout the years, seeking help when a leaked video of him trying to eat a cheeseburger off the floor was leaked.
David Hasselhoff’s daughter had taken the leaked video to try to help her dad (Picture: BEI/REX/Shutterstock)
The former Baywatch star said the leaked video, taken by his daughter Taylor-Ann in 2007, helped him get help for his alcohol addiction.
Wenn quote the 58-year-old actor as saying: ‘When I found out about the tape, I was overcome with an amazing sense of calm.
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‘God was basically saying, “It’s time to stop”. I knew why Taylor did it: she was afraid for me. I said, “That’s pretty cool that my daughter loves me to say, Dad, this is what you look like. We’re scared”. End of story.’
Commenting on his battle to stay sober, Hasselhoff said: ‘It’s not about falling. It’s how fast you get up. You can count on me getting up. Hasselhoffs don’t duck, we say, “Bring it on!”‘
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