Dashing but troubled TV star who hit the big time with adventure series Airwolf

Jan-Michael Vincent, who has died aged 74, was once touted as the next James Dean and, in the 1980s, as the star of the American action series Airwolf, was the highest-paid actor on television; but he never quite escaped his early branding as a teen idol.

But, undermined by his demons, his life disintegrated under the strain of alcoholism and drug dependency, until he was reduced to sleeping on park benches.

Vincent’s career had two phases. The first came in the 1970s, when Hollywood positioned him as the heir to leading men such as Charles Bronson and Burt Reynolds, whom he appeared beside in films including The

Mechanic and

Hooper. Yet his association with several highprofile movies which bombed, notably the surfing drama Big Wednesday and the science-fiction film Damnation Alley, which had the misfortune to be released in 1977 at the same time as Star Wars, led producers to shun him.

He also gained a reputation for drunken brawling, and by the end of the decade had been arrested for growing marijuana and several times for possessing cocaine. Vincent retained into his thirties, however, his surfer’s physique and the moody good looks of a teenager. And in 1983 his fortunes were revived by the television adaptation of Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War, which brought him a Golden Globe nomination, his second, for best supporting actor.

The success of the miniseries, which followed an American family through World War II, and in which Vincent played the son of Robert Mitchum’s naval officer, led to his being cast the following year in Airwolf.

This was created by the television mogul Donald P Bellisario as a spin-off from Magnum P.I. The series was made in the cheerfully preposterous mould of others of the era, such as Knight Rider, which armoured the lone hero of the Western with modern technology. Vincent was Stringfellow Hawke, a brooding, cello-playing Vietnam veteran who righted wrongs flying an advanced helicopter (hidden in an extinct volcano) for a shadowy intelligence agency run by one Michael Coldwell-Briggs III, who dressed in white and called himself Archangel.

More memorable aspects of the programme were supplied by Ernest Borgnine as Hawke’s mechanic, and by its pulsing synthesiser-driven theme tune.

Everything else on screen, however (as with the film Top Gun in 1986), was overshadowed by the aerial sequences – including Vincent’s performance. Others on set recalled that he was drunk much of the time, leading him to be dubbed ‘‘Jan-Michael Vodka’’. There were stories of shenanigans in his trailer involving drugs and women, with the impression being that he had lost confidence in his ability to front a show.

His mental state was made more fragile still by the death in a helicopter crash of a young stuntman whom he had befriended.

Vincent’s salary was widely reported to be US$200,000 per episode, then a record for a television actor, although his biographer David Grove put it at $125,000. Ratings were never high, however, and after three seasons – the final one made on a much-reduced budget – Airwolf was cancelled. Thereafter, Vincent’s life became ever more troubled and his lustre dimmed further.

One of three children, Jan Michael Vincent was born in 1944 in Denver, Colorado, where his father was stationed as a wartime B-25 bomber pilot. Lloyd Vincent, who had eloped with his wife Doris when she was 16, hailed, however, from California.

Accordingly, Jan – he began using his more obviously masculine middle name when he became an actor – grew up in Hanford, where his father had a signwriting business. Lloyd was an alcoholic, like his own father Herbert, a onetime bank robber.

Jan dropped out of Ventura College, where he was doing art, to go to Mexico to surf, at which he became skilled. He was then spotted by the talent agent Dick Clayton, who had represented James Dean. Clayton also had the unknown Nick Nolte and Harrison Ford on his books, but was most convinced of Vincent’s potential.

This led to junior-lead roles beside John Wayne (The Undefeated, 1969) and Gene Hackman (Bite the Bullet, 1975). For a time producers believed him to be on the cusp of stardom, and at the time of the Tarzan spoof The World’s Greatest Athlete in 1973 for Disney he was receiving 5000 fan letters a week.

Yet the parts, and perhaps his skills, never developed, though he showed flashes of talent in the anti-war TV movie Tribes (1970) and in the feature film Going Home the following year – playing Robert Mitchum’s son, by coincidence, earned him the first of his two Golden Globe nominations.

By now Vincent was falling prey to drugs and over the next 30 years his life became a metaphorical and literal series of car crashes, the most serious of which, in 1996, he was lucky to survive after breaking his neck.

Vincent was arrested numerous times. He was alleged to have kicked a kitten to death and in 2000 was adjudged to have assaulted a former girlfriend.

He turned up in straight-to-video films, but his looks faded and in 2012 one leg was partially amputated.

Jan-Michael Vincent was twice married and divorced and is survived by his third wife, Patricia Ann, and by a daughter from his first marriage. – Telegraph Group

At the time of the Tarzan spoof The World’s Greatest Athlete in 1973 for Disney he was receiving 5000 fan letters a week.