David Hasselhoff bought back Baywatch with his own money and made it a global hit
NBC dropped Baywatch after one season. David Hasselhoff was convinced it could work, so he poured in his own money, produced it for syndication and negotiated rerun royalties. The revived show reached almost a billion viewers in 140 countries, while his pop records topped the charts in Germany and Switzerland.
Hasselhoff was born in Baltimore on 17 July 1952 and first went on stage at seven in Peter Pan, which left him dreaming of Broadway. After studying theatre at the California Institute of the Arts, he landed the soap role of Dr. Snapper Foster in 1975 on The Young and the Restless. His first film, Revenge of the Cheerleaders, was a job he took only to qualify for the actors' union, believing it would never be released. It was.
NBC's president Brandon Tartikoff cast him as Michael Knight in Knight Rider, which ran from 1982 to 1986 and won him a People's Choice Award. Hasselhoff has joked that while actors in The Godfather or Lawrence of Arabia got good scripts, he had to talk to a car. He thinks audiences loved the series because its hero saved lives rather than took them.
Baywatch premiered in 1989 and was cancelled after a single season. Hasselhoff revived it in 1991, investing personally and serving as executive producer, and royalties from reruns let him buy the rights back from NBC. The show lasted 11 years in total, and together with his other ventures it pushed his fortune past 100 million dollars. He also recorded fifteen studio albums, which sold best in German-speaking Europe, where Looking for Freedom went to number one.
Later decades leaned into self-parody. He played himself in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, coached a German squad in DodgeBall, and sent up his Knight Rider role in a music video. He made his Broadway debut in Jekyll & Hyde in 2000, judged America's Got Talent from 2006 to 2009, and appeared as himself in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, singing over its closing credits.
Source: David Hasselhoff
