David Soul

A tall, blond actor who has played heroes who are masculine yet soft and whose eyes express a pain yet uncovered, David Soul used ingenuity to break into show business, sending out glossy photos of himself with his head covered as the "mystery singer." Merv Griffin took the bite and put Soul on his syndicated talk show, thus breaking the ice.

Soul then made his acting debut on an episode of "Star Trek" in 1967, and from 1968-70 played Joshua Bolt, the middle brother of three who bring 100 women to Seattle in "Here Come the Brides" on ABC. In 1974, he replaced Lee Majors as the associate attorney on "Owen Marshall, Counsellor at Law" (ABC). Finally, came TV stardom, when Soul played Ken 'Hutch' Hutchinson on the cop drama "Starsky & Hutch" (ABC, 1975-79). He was well cast as the soft-spoken, educated cop, but was miscast as Rick (the Humphrey Bogart character) in his 1983 return to series TV, the short-lived "Casablanca" (NBC).

Later that year, Soul was in the cast of another short-lived NBC series, the primetime serial "The Yellow Rose."

Soul first worked in TV-movies in "The Disappearance of Flight 412" (NBC, 1974). He had his first miniseries lead with "Salem's Lot" (CBS, 1979), in which he returns to his home town and finds it infected by vampires and must become a vampire killer to save the community. In 1980, Soul played a convicted rapist who undergoes intense therapy in prison to find the root cause of his impulses in "Rage" (NBC). He also starred in Agnes Nixon's "Manions of America" miniseries for ABC in 1981, based on her Irish immigrant heritage, and has continued working in TV-movies into the 90s.

Soul first appeared in feature films in a supporting role in "Johnny Got His Gun" (1971), and lent support to Clint Eastwood in "Magnum Force" (1973). After his TV series work waned, he returned to feature film work in the 80s in "The Hanoi Hilton" (1987), playing a gung-ho military prisoner in North Vietnam who decides he has had enough degradation and turns over in his bunk, practically willing himself to die. Soul co-wrote the 1994 feature "Tides of War," in which he played a Nazi trying to build a missile sight on a remote British outpost in order to attack America. He was a vengeful East German Olympics coach in "Pentathlon" (1995).

Dedicated to the causes of workers, Soul made the documentary "Fighting Ministers" in 1986, which detailed the efforts by clergy in Pittsburgh to aid workers during a strike, leading to many arrests. He has also been a director, commencing with episodes of "Starsky & Hutch" and including episodes of other series, such as "Miami Vice" and "Hunter."

Soul has also never abandoned the singing career which first brought him TV attention. He has performed at Radio City Music Hall in New York City as well as the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles.