Starsky & Hutch actor David Soul dies aged 80
The actor David Soul, best known for his role in the television series Starsky & Hutch, has died at the age of 80, his wife, Helen Snell, said.
“David Soul – beloved husband, father, grandfather and brother – died yesterday after a valiant battle for life in the loving company of family,” she said in a statement on Friday. “He shared many extraordinary gifts in the world as actor, singer, storyteller, creative artist and dear friend.
“His smile, laughter and passion for life will be remembered by the many whose lives he has touched.”
The British American actor was best known for his role as Detective Kenneth “Hutch” Hutchinson on Starsky & Hutch, the US action TV series which ran from 1975 to 1979. Other notable roles included Joshua Bolt in the comedy western Here Come the Brides, from 1968 to 1970, and as Officer John Davis in the 1973 film Magnum Force. Soul was also a singer with such hits as Don’t Give Up on Us and Silver Lady, which both went to No 1 in the UK.
Born on 28 August 1943 in Chicago, Illinois, Soul grew up in a religious family of Norwegian descent. His father, Richard Solberg, was a Lutheran minister and a history professor. “The atmosphere was strict when I was growing up but tempered by love,” Soul recalled to the Guardian in 2012. “We were a very, very religious family – we weren’t fundamentalists, just very worshipful and gave credit to God for almost everything.” The family lived a peripatetic lifestyle to accommodate Solberg’s teaching, moving from Berlin to Mexico City and eventually settling in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where Soul graduated from high school. While studying for a year at the University of the Americas in Mexico City, he was inspired by students who taught him to play guitar and shifted his focus to music, eventually performing in clubs in Minneapolis.
He began performing on stage in the mid-60s, and was a founding member of the Firehouse Theater in Minneapolis. Soul gained attention for his stage work while touring the country with the group, particularly as the “Covered Man” on the Merv Griffin show in 1966 and 1967, where he sang while wearing a mask. Shortly thereafter came his first television appearance on Flipper. He signed a contract with Columbia Pictures in 1967 and began a series of guest appearances, including on Star Trek, before landing the role on Here Come the Brides.
Soul moved to the UK in the mid-1990s, where he forged a career on the West End stage in productions such as Comic Potential and Blood Brothers. He became a British citizen in 2004.
Soul was married five times: to Mim Solberg, in 1964; to the actor Karen Carlson, with whom he had one son, in 1968; to Patti Sherman in 1980, with
whom he had three children; and to the actor Julia Nickson in 1987, with whom he had their daughter China Soul, a singer-songwriter. He met Snell in 2002 on the set of the British stage production Deathtrap, and the couple married in 2010.
This article was amended on 5 January 2024. An earlier version wrongly referred to the series Here Come the
Brides as Here Comes the Bride. This has been corrected