Jan-Michael Vincent
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| Jan-Michael Vincent | |||||||
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| Born | July 15, 1944 Denver, Colorado, U.S. |
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| Spouse(s) | Bonnie Portman (1974-75) 1 child (div) Joanne Robinson (30 August 1986 - 1997) (div) |
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Jan-Michael Vincent (born July 15, 1944) is an American actor most well-known for his role as helicopter pilot Stringfellow Hawke on the 1980s U.S. television series Airwolf (1984–1986), which continues to enjoy a large cult fanbase. Vincent had an extensive television and film career that began in the late 1960s and lasted until the early 2000s.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Vincent was born in Denver, Colorado, to Doris and Lloyd Vincent. His family moved to Hanford, California, when Jan-Michael was in his teens. Vincent attended Ventura College in Southern California.
[edit] Career
[edit] 1960s
Vincent's first acting job was in the movie Los Bandidos, directed by and starring Robert Conrad, in 1964. His acting career took off in the late 1960s when casting agent Dick Clayton signed Vincent to Universal Studios, where he appeared on television in small roles such as "Dragnet 1968." In 1970, Vincent garnered critical praise for his role in the made for TV film "classic" known as Tribes, co-starring Darren McGavin, about a tough, Marine boot-camp drill instructor, that has to deal with a "hippie" draftee (portrayed by Jan-Michael), who won’t play by "the rules". Vincent also appeared in the Disney film The World's Greatest Athlete as a Tarzan-like young man who becomes a great professional athlete. He also appeared in the "Danger Island" segments on Hanna-Barbera's Banana Splits series as Link. Vincent also made an appearance on the Dragnet Series Episode "The Grenade" as a muscular high school student who suffered an acid attack by a mentally unstable fellow classmate.
[edit] 1970s
Vincent became a popular and an acclaimed film star during the 1970s, especially for his co-starring role with Charles Bronson in the crime film The Mechanic. Other notable films included the Western The Undefeated with John Wayne and the cult surfing film Big Wednesday with William Katt and Gary Busey. Vincent starred in the 1973 movie The World's Greatest Athlete, with Tim Conway and John Amos. Vincent also starred in the 1974 romance Buster and Billie as the romantic anti-hero Buster Lane. In Hooper with Burt Reynolds, Vincent played a young stunt man. In 1975, he also starred in the cult classic trucker movie White Line Fever, followed by the notorious Damnation Alley, based on Roger Zelazny's science fiction novel, in 1977. One of the most memorable, for women who were teens in the 70's, is Sand Castles (1972). A movie about a young man who dies in an auto accident returns from the dead to meet up with the young woman who tried to save him.
[edit] 1980s
In 1980, he starred in the gang-themed drama, Defiance, which received only a limited release. He had a starring role alongside Burt Reynolds in the stuntman film Hooper[1] and in The Return, a little-seen science-fiction film which was released directly to television and video. In 1981, he co-starred with Kim Basinger in Hard Country.
After an acclaimed performance in the 1983 television miniseries The Winds of War, Vincent was cast as Stringfellow Hawke for the action-espionage series Airwolf, in which Vincent co-starred with Ernest Borgnine. It is probably the role for which Vincent is best known and remembered, and one for which he was especially well paid. It was noted, at the time, that Vincent's salary for his work on Airwolf was the highest paid of any actor in American television.[citation needed]
After the end of Airwolf, Vincent's acting career took a downturn, and he found himself in increasingly smaller-budget and lower-exposure film projects that typically went directly to video.
[edit] 1990s and 2000s
Jan-Michael Vincent has been involved in two severe automobile accidents from which he barely escaped alive. As a result of one accident in 1996, in which Vincent broke three vertebrae in his neck, he sustained a permanent injury to his vocal cords from an emergency medical procedure. This has left him with a permanently raspy voice. It was while he was in the hospital that he was committed to a role in "Red Line" with Chad McQueen. He appeared in the film with a swollen face, scars, and still wearing the hospital ID bracelet.
In an interview on the TV program The Insider on September 18, 2007, when asked about the 1996 car accident, he answered, "Y'know, I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't remember being in an accident." He later discussed being an alcoholic.[2]
In 1997 he had a small guest role on Nash Bridges playing the title character's long-lost brother.
A notable exception to the downward trend in Vincent's post-Airwolf career was his small role in the critically acclaimed independent film Buffalo '66, in 1998.
His last movie role was in the independent film White Boy, also titled Menace (for the US video version), released in March 2002.
As of 2007, Vincent resides with a female companion in the Eagle Lake area of Warren County, Mississippi, just north of Vicksburg.[citation needed]
Vincent has a daughter, Amber Springbird Vincent,[citation needed] from his marriage to first wife Bonnie Portman.[citation needed]
[edit] In Popular Culture
In 2002, the popular Japanese anime series Battle of the Planets was turned into a monthly comic series by Top Cow comics. In it a group of teenage superheroes called G-Force take on alien invaders. One of them, Jason, appeared in a one-off adventure in 2003. In it he is described as "lookin' like Jan-Michael Vincent in his prime... an underrated star — a guy's guy... Back when they had real actors not these virtual stiffs getting 50 mil per picture".[3]
