Rarely has a heartthrob been as concerned about his fame as David Soul. For years he refused to even talk about Starsky & Hutch, the wildly popular detective series that made him the golden idol of 1970s Saturday night TV.
He wanted to become a serious actor and complained that for years he had been held “hostage” to his role as relaxed, intellectual cop Ken “Hutch” Hutchinson.
However, when Warner Brothers announced the 2004 film version starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, he was furious that he and co-star Paul Michael Glaser had not been approached, even though they were eventually cast in guest roles.
Soul, who has died aged 80, had been trying for years to get the studio interested in a sequel based on a rather worthy-sounding script he had written, in which one of the duo became an anti-capitalist protester.
“I'm passionate about communicating with people,” he told Terry Wogan in 1991, in an interview in which the actor preferred to talk about the work of the Family Welfare Association rather than Tinseltown gossip.
Although, as he admitted to Wogan, his own family – five wives and six children – had their own welfare problems, given his problems with alcohol and a violent temper that once landed him in court for beating one of his wives.
David Soul (pictured left in 1975) starred in Starsky and Hutch opposite Michael Glaser (right)
Rarely has a heartthrob been as tormented by his fame as David Soul (pictured in 1978)
The actor was so keen to distance himself from Hollywood that he moved to Britain in the mid-1990s and became a British citizen in 2004. Yesterday his widow Helen said he had died on Thursday 'after a brave struggle for life in loving company'. from family. His smile, laughter and passion for life will be remembered by the many whose lives he touched.”
TV viewers of a certain age, especially women, will surely remember that smile that, along with his sparkling blue eyes and his brooding co-star Glaser, put posters of the couple on the walls of a generation of teenage girls.
The series ran on BBC1 from 1975 to 1979 and earned its star iconic status. Soul in particular received Beatle-like admiration. He was also a musician and singer, and at his first concert after rising to fame in New York in 1977, one reviewer described the “camera-wielding teenage girls storming the stage” and “the flickering of hundreds of exploding flash cubes and a constant beeping.” .
His arrival at Heathrow for a concert in London shortly afterwards caused similar scenes of fan frenzy as 5,000 of them stormed the airport to greet him.
It wasn't hard to see the appeal of the star or the show, especially in gloomy 1970s Britain. Set in a fictional California town, it features two smoldering cops zipping around in a red-and-white striped Ford Gran Torino. It had a glamor that was missing from homegrown rivals like Softly, Softly or The Sweeney.
Many actors would have been happy with the critical acclaim, but not the serious Soul, who insisted he had fallen into acting and never aimed for fame.
Exploiting his fame to boost his career as a musician, he scored a string of hits including Don't Give Up On Us and Silver Lady.
His post-Hutch Hollywood career, however, was less of a triumph. After committing himself to a series of blind ventures, he moved to Britain in the 1990s to start a new – and successful – career on the West End stage in shows such as Blood Brothers.
He didn't completely forget the small screen. His occasional TV appearances in shows ranged from Holby City to an adaptation of Agatha Christie's Death On The Nile.
David Soul outside the Dorchester Hotel prior to the UK premiere of Starsky and Hutch at the Odeon Leicester Square, London, in March 2004
Perhaps Soul's most surprising British performance, however, was campaigning for his friend and former BBC journalist Martin Bell in the 1997 general election, to defeat the disgraced Tory Neil Hamilton and become MP for Tatton.
But Soul had always been an idealist. Born David Solberg in Chicago in 1943, he was the eldest of five children and the product of a strict Christian upbringing, largely in the American Midwest. His father was not only an academic but also a Lutheran minister.
There were prayers before and after all meals, he was regularly beaten with a wooden coat hanger and every time young David went out his mother warned him: 'Make sure you are a good Christian boy. And if you can't be a Christian, at least be good.”
He couldn't do it. At the age of 18, he fled to Minneapolis, leaving girlfriend Mim pregnant with his baby. “The shame was terrible,” he told the Mail in 1997. 'I knew there was no alternative but to marry her, but I couldn't tell my parents because their strong moral code meant they would have come down with the wrath on me. from God.'
After a shotgun wedding when Soul was just 21, the marriage lasted just 18 months and ended when he found her in bed with another man. He began a series of relationships, most of which were destroyed by his volcanic temper.
His second marriage, to actress Karen Carlson, lasted nine years from 1968. She later said their son Jon was “severely frightened” by his father.
By then, he had given up ambitions to follow his father into academia or join the Peace Corps, the U.S. government agency that trains volunteers to work in international aid.
He performed with a touring theater company and, shortening his name to Soul and moving to New York, also became a singer and got regular work on TV shows. Hiding his good looks behind a mask during performances, he said only, “My name is David Soul and I want to be known for my music.”
In 1960s New York he became involved with The Factory, Andy Warhol's hip and druggy salon of musicians, porn stars and drag queens. “I was meat for the mill there,” he later admitted.
One of his first film roles was in a 1967 episode of Star Trek, and Clint Eastwood later cast him as a corrupt cop in his 1973 film drama Magnum Force.
The role caught the attention of producer Aaron Spelling, who chose him to play Hutch two years later. His career soared into the stratosphere and his love life reflected his heartthrob status.
During the Starsky & Hutch years, he and his girlfriend, actress Lynne Marta, had an “open relationship” in which they lived together but found lovers wherever they pleased.
He built a mansion in Bel-Air with proceeds from the series, but Soul admitted that the show left him artistically unfulfilled while he found his hyper-stardom difficult. It certainly contributed to his worsening alcoholism.
In 1980 he married third wife Patti Carnel, an ex-girlfriend of Jimi Hendrix. Their six-year marriage produced three children, but ended very badly. She accused Soul of sitting on her stomach when she was seven months pregnant, blackening her eyes and breaking her fingers.
Soul insisted he only hit her once, but added, “And I know that was too many times.”
After she accused him of punching her in the face, he was charged with assault and battery in 1982. Two years later, the charges were dropped after he completed a domestic violence treatment program.
He later told a BBC program about his violence: 'There is no excuse. The hardest part is looking at yourself and those you love and hurt. We live with guilt and shame.'
However, his father, he once told the Mail, had 'raised me never to talk about my feelings'. He married fourth wife, actress Julia Nickson, in 1987, but – in the great Soul tradition – they divorced after six years. In 1992 he met Alexa Hamilton, an actress and singer 20 years his junior, and they moved to Britain together. They lived in London and she described their relationship as 'turbulent'.
David Soul in 1948, aged five, wearing a shirt made by his mother
Soul never returned to live in the US – and once explained the appeal of London: 'I like reading a newspaper and walking down the street, things you don't do in America, because you watch TV and drive.'
He married his last wife, British Helen Snell, in 2010. They started dating in 2002 after meeting when he was in the West End production of the play Deathtrap and she was doing public relations.
Soul said he always got along with his wives, but – tragically – only after they divorced.
His alter ego Hutch, who was also divorced, was usually too busy chasing bad guys to interact with women.