Click on a name below to take you to that page
David Hasselhoff
I met David Hasselhoff at the Memorabilia show held at the Birmingham NEC in November 2012. He was a popular, and very friendly guest.
My photo of 'The Hoff' at Memorabilia
David Michael Hasselhoff was born in 1952 in Baltimore, Maryland. His parents were Joseph (a salesman for Brinks Inc. the armoured car people) and Dolores Hasselhoff. He is ofGe
of German descent. He has a four sisters, Daine, Joyce, Lisa and Jean who is an actress. Due to his father's work, the family moved frequently. As a boy, Hasselhoff lived in Jacksonville, Florida (where he began taking acting, singing and dancing lessons), and later in Rothesay, Scotland, where he attended Marist High School.
Baywatch - Series 1
Knight Rider (TV Series Story)
David Hasselhoff as a baby
After returning to America, he graduated from Lyons Township High School in La Grange, Illinois, before further studies at Oakland University. He went on to study at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Chicago, and later at the California Institute of the Arts, all in pursuit of his ambitions to be star of Broadway musicals.
Hasselhoff aged 5
David Hasselhoff aged 18
However, whilst in California in 1975, heland
he landed the role of Dr William 'Snapper' Foster Jr. in the long running
running TV series The Young and the Restless and his destiny as an actor was sealed. Hasselhoff only appeared in sixep
David Hasselhoff as 'Snapper' Foster in
The Young and the Restless
six episodes of this soap, which has aired in America for forty years since 1973.
After further small roles in TV andf
and film, his career took off in 1982 when he appeared in one of his most popular and well remembered roles, Michael Knight in the hugely successful series Knight Rider (1982-86
Hasselhoff & Caroline Munro in Starcrash
(1982-86). This ran for four seasons and spawned the later TV movie
movie Knight Rider 2000 (1991). Knight is a former police officer who fought crime with the help of a talking Pontiac Trans Am named KITT (Knight Industries Two Thousand
Hasselhoff as Michael Knight
Thousand). The series, watched by huge audiences, became a terrific success for Hasselhoff
Hasselhoff whose career was about to achieve superstar status. The series was nominated for a Primetime Emmy in 1983, in the Sound Editing category.
in Knight Rider
David Hasselhoff in Knight Rider
In 1989, the first series of Baywatch hit the TV screens of America. Hasselhoff plays a veteran lifeguard Mitch Buchannon, leader of a team of attractive beach lifeguards who defend the beaches of Los Angeles County from all kinds of peril. Despite plenty of slow motion shots of young
young, soaking-wet heart throbs running along the beach, the show was cancelled aftero
Hasselhoff with the Baywatch lifeguards patrol team
after only one season because of low ratings. Hasseloff was convinced that the show had the potential to be a huge success, and invested his own money into reviving it. It turned out to be an astute move. The series restarted in 1991 and quickly gained huge popularity, allowing Hasslehoff to buy the rights for the show from NBC. It ran for ten series until 1999 as Baywatch, and then until 2001, with setting and cast changes, as Baywatch Hawaii. Watched in 140 countries, it is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the 'most watched show' with 1.1 billion viewers.
Hasselhoff as Mitch Buchannon
in Baywatch
A far-less successful spin-off series was the 44-episode series Baywatch Nights (1995-97), with Hasselhoff's character, Mitch Buchannon, investigating and solving a variety of crimes which are related to the beach, like smuggling.
With so much Baywatch involvement, it is not surprising that Hasselhoff had little time for other productions. He made several TV movies though, including The Ring of Musketeers (1992); Avalanche (1994) and Gridlock (1996) in which he played a helicopter-flying New York traffic cop.
Hasselhoff & Kathy Ireland in Gridlock
Hasselhoff in The SpongeBob
SquarePants Movie
After Baywatch, Hasselhoff became fascinated with self-parody, and going on to play the part of himself, or some of his characters from previous
previous series. He famously played a cameo of himself from Baywatch (with his iconic lifeguard costume) in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004). Other parody cameos came in the films Dodgeball:
David Hasselhoff in Kickin' It Old Skool
Dodgeball: A True Underdog
Underdog Story (2004) in which he smashes a photo of himself in Baywatch, and Kickin' It Old Skool (2007) where he loans K.I.T.T to the main character to use for a date. He even put in anappearance
David Hasselhoff in Piranha 3DD
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Rawson Thurber & David Hasselhoff in
Hasselhoff & Crystal Allen in Anaconda III
David Hasselhoff has always fancied himself as a pop singer!
Swiss pop charts with his single Looking for Freedom. He sang this song at a star-studded New Year's Eve concert at the Berlin Wall when it was brought down in 1989. All in all, Hasselhoff has recorded eighteen albums and sixteen singles, and whilst most of his success was in German-speaking Europe, his song Jump in My Car, and its accompanying video, reached No.3 in the UK charts in 2006. This was after an internet campaign began aimed at getting it to the No.1 spot.
As well as film and TV work, Hasselhoff had a brief music career in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He had long dreamt of becoming a pop star and this came true in 1988 when he met the German composer and record producer Horst Nussbaum, better known as Jack White. The following year, he had a No.1 hit in the German, Austrian and Swissp.
David Hasselhoff & Andrea Rivette in
Jekyll & Hyde The Musical
A number of Internet communities have also popularised Hasselhoff and elevated him to cult status. He proclaimed himself 'King of the Internet' in an advertising commercial for Pipex telecommun
David Hasselhoff in a Pipex commercial
telecommunications, and a 2007 survey showed that he wast
was the cult star most searched for on the Internet.
Hasselhoff's resurgant career enabled him to develop his early aspirations as a stage actor. He performed the dual role of both Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in the Broadway production of Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical (2001) at the Plymouth Theatre; the lead male role of Billy Flynn in Chicago (2004) at the Adelphi Theatre, London; Roger DeBris in the Las Vegas version of The Producers (2007) and even Dr Frank N Furter
As Billy Flynn in Chicago
As Roger DeBris in
The Producers
Furter in a Los Angeles production of The Rocky Horror Show
Show (2010). Hasselhoff has been well received by the theatre critics for these performances, and with typical self-adulation has commented that "the talent that I was blessed with was really for the theatre." He has recently ventured into the world of the British Pantomime, as Captain Hook in Peter Pan at the Manchester Opera House. In this 2012 production, he reprises the role he played
David Hasselhoff as Captain Hook in
played at the New Wimbledon Theatre in 2010, and at the Bristol Hippodrome in 2011
Judges for America's Got Talent in 2006
There can be no doubting Hasselhoff's versatility in taking on such a variety of Showbiz
Peter Pan in Manchester (2012)
Showbiz roles, including that of just being a 'personality' ora
or a 'celebrity'. He was a co-judge on NBC's America's Got Talent (2006); he was a featured guest in a Volkeswagen commercial (2008); he guest hosted professional wrestling's WWE Raw in London (2010) and he appeared as a contestant on Season 11 of Dancing With the Stars (2010). In 2011, he took on the role of a judge in the show Britain's Got Talent. Replacing Piers Morgan, he appeared alongside Amanda Holden, Simon Cowell and Michael McIntyre.
Britain's Got Talent judge in 2011
Hasselhoff has a real passion for outdoor sports including scuba diving, hiking, white water rafting, and tennis. It is hardly surprising
surprising, given his celebrity status, that hes has been able to do things like parachuting with the US Army Parachute Demonstration Team, The Golden Knights; flying with the US Navy's Blue Angels. As an avid sports
sports fan, he is able to attend events including World Cup Soccer Finals
The Hoff's Walk of Fame star
Finals, the Olympics, the Indy 500, and the Kentucky Derby.
In 1996, Hasselhoff was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at No. 7018 Hollywood Boulevard. Because of his long association with pop music in Europe, in 2012 he was made into a waxwork for Madame Tussauds in Vienna.
David Hasselhoff's waxwork at
Madame Tussauds in Vienna
Two editions of David Hasselhoff's autobiography
Hasselhoff was married to actress Catherine Hickland from 1984 until 1989, a wedding
Catherine Hickland
Pamela Bach
Hayley Roberts
wedding that was recreated in the Knight Rider episode The Scent of Roses (1986). In an odd coincidence, Catherine remarried to a man called Michael Knight! Hasselhoff's second marriage was to actress Pamela Bach in 1989. The couple had two daughters, Taylor Ann (b.1990), and Hayley
Hayley (b.1992) who is now an actress. In 2006, Hasselhoff announced he was filing for divorce, citing 'irreconcilable differences'. Hasselhoff's current girlfriend is Hayley Roberts from Wales, whom he met in 2011 when she asked him for his autograph at the Britain's Got Talent auditions, held in Cardiff. He has proposed to her several times (including once on the top of Sydney Harbour Bridge!) but she has always turned him down - so far!
Hasselhoff with his daughters Taylor & Hayley
I took these two photos of David Hasselhoff meeting fans at the Memorabilia event in November 2012
an appearance as a celebrity lifeguard in the universally panned
panned film Piranha 3DD (2012). Other recent non-parody
parody films have included Fugitives Run (2005); Click (2006);
(2006); Anaconda III (2008) and Dancing Ninja (2010).
VIDEOS
