David Hasselhoff

Born: July 17 1952
Where: Baltimore, Maryland, USA

As Knight Rider's Michael Knight and Baywatch's Mitch Buchannon, the evergreen actor has enjoyed a successful career that firmly verges on the camp.

Away from the screen, he has also forged a pop career - he is inexplicably gigantic in Germany - and as a TV producer (he bought Baywatch when the series was dropped).

After taking singing and dancing lessons aged seven, the young Hasselhoff was presciently cast as Peter Pan in a school production.

Following drama school he moved to California and landed the role of Snapper Forrester in the TV soap The Young and the Restless.

He made his feature debut with the dodgy role of Boner in the forgettable The Revenge of the Cheerleaders.

In 1982, after regular TV appearances in the likes of The Love Boat and Diff'rent Strokes, he was cast in Knight Rider.

As Michael Knight, he fought crime the American way with a talking Trans Am called Kitt who helped him out of sticky situations.

The success of Knight Rider gave him an international following and allowed him to launch his pop career.

Looking for Freedom remained in the number one spot on the German charts for eight consecutive weeks and led to his bizarre appearance belting it out on a cherry-picker crane after the Berlin Wall fell.

His TV career enjoyed its second flush of success with the lifeguard series Baywatch alongside a cast of lovelies including Pamela Anderson and Yasmin Bleeth.

Although it was a ratings hit, NBC cancelled the series after one season only for Hasselhoff to buy the rights and successfully revive it in 1991.

The programme was seen in more than 140 countries and watched by more than a billion people, estimates say.

In a career dominated by Knight Rider and Baywatch, Hasselhoff had made the odd foray into film, including the unintentionally hilarious Cartier Affair with Joan Collins and Telly Savalas.

In 2002, he was admitted to the Betty Ford Clinic for alchohol-related problems and he and his wife escaped serious injury in a motorcycle crash in February 2003.

The same year he was back on the beach for Baywatch: Hawaiian Wedding and was also cast in the comedy Fugitives Run.