Actor Michael Cole, star of The Mod Squad, died Tuesday at age 84, Fox News reported. A representative for the actor said Cole died "peacefully this morning, surrounded by loved ones, after living a full and vibrant life."
Cole passed away at the Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. No cause of death has been publicly provided for the actor.
He is survived by his third wife, Shelley Funes, and his two adult children, Candi and Jeff, from a previous relationship. Cole was predeceased by Peggy Lipton and Clarence Williams III, both of his co-stars from the ABC detective series.
Cole's career spanned several decades, but he is best known for playing Pete Cochran in The Mod Squad from 1968 to 1973. The show notched 123 episodes by the time the series wrapped after five seasons.
Cole was born on July 3, 1940, and did not have an easy childhood. Raised in Madison, Wisconsin, with his older brother and mother in his grandmother's home, Cole never met his father.
He began drinking when he was just 12 and was always in some kind of trouble as an adolescent. At 16, Cole got his girlfriend pregnant and decided to drop out of high school to get married.
The couple had two children together before getting divorced. However, this rocky start led to some serendipitous meetings that would ultimately propel the actor to stardom.
After leaving Wisconsin, Cole settled in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he met actor and singer Bobby Darin. He would move again, this time to live under a freeway in Los Angeles, where he eventually met acting coach Estelle Harman.
Cole credited Harman with giving him a significant boost with a helping hand, including a bed to sleep on in her workshop and free acting lessons. In 2018, the actor said Harman "recognized what was in there before I did."
Following that life-changing help from Harman, Cole's career took off after a meeting with famed producer Aaron Spelling. In his 2018 memoir, "I Played the White Guy," Cole described how he was cast in the hit television series.
"I resisted taking the part when Spelling offered it, telling him, ‘[The show] sounds stupid, and I hope it never gets on the air. I didn’t want to play some guy who ratted on some other troubled kids," Cole said The Mod Squad, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
It was precisely that attitude that Spelling was looking for. Cole took the role as one of the three criminals turned detectives in the drama that defined a generation. "They were able to effectively bring criminals to justice with little or no violence," Rebeka Knott noted on the nostalgia website Groovy History.
"That is what the hippie culture was about … being peaceful." This role launched Cole on a trajectory that included appearances on notable television shows of the era, including CHiPs, Fantasy Island, Murder, She Wrote, and later the iconic 1990s groundbreaking medical drama ER.
Cole was a man who left his mark on midcentury television and beyond. His death is a tragedy that has left a nation in mourning, but Cole's body of work lives on in the annals of classic television.
