With the film version of the retro TV series Starsky & Hutch currently on circuit worldwide, David Soul, the blonde half of the 70s heart throb duo, has found himself in the limelight once more.
But, it's not all been memories of happy days.
Soul, now 60, who famously battled drink at the peak of his career and was dropped by Hollywood after being arrested for beating his third wife, has also told for the first time how his problems began when he found his first wife in a state of undress with one of his close friends.
In a candid interview - He's Starsky, I'm Hutch - on UK's Channel 4, the four- times married father of six first told how he:
- Was "used" by men at pop artist Andy Warhol's famous Factory, although he was not gay.
- Ran away from his strict religious home in small town America to marry his pregnant teenage girlfriend.
- Came home one day to find her in a romantic clinch with a man he thought was his friend.
- Made countless conquests among female co-stars and extras while assuring his second wife he was being faithful.
- Beat his third wife to a bloody mess, which led to public disgrace and the loss of his fortune.
"I had more money than I'd ever had. I had a house at the top of the hill. There was a kind of sense that it would never go away," he says. "That was a big mistake I made."
After leaving Starsky & Hutch he became a pop idol, particularly in Britain, but descended into alcoholism.
He has lived in London since the beginning of the 90s, appearing on the West End stage.
The eldest son of a Lutheran parson, he had a strict Christian upbringing but his relationship with his parents broke down when he got his 18-year-old girlfriend Mim pregnant. "We couldn't talk about anything. Feelings were not something you spoke about," Soul says.
Newly married, he and Mim settled in Minneapolis where Soul came home one day to find his wife and a friend, theatre actor Dan Webber "together": "I was at least partially disrobed and David came back and found us," recalls Mim, who eventually ran off with Webber while Soul took over his former friend's theatre role. As he puts it: "He got my wife, I got his part."
He changed his name to David Soul and moved to New York, where he struggled to make a living. So he did what many other penniless actors have done: "I had to do a lot of things to stay alive. I sold myself," he says.
"I was broke, but I was an attractive kid who was invited places."
Soul had never heard of Andy Warhol but ended up at his so called Factory. "I was meat for the grinder at that place," he admits.
"I would be set up as a little boy toy for somebody. I must have been there about three or four times and finally it just made me sick.
"Basically, he (Warhol) and his people, would use people. Everything was going on there. And then he would pass himself on as some sort of an artist. It really made me sick."
But Soul soon found stardom with Paul Michael Glaser in the buddy police series Starsky & Hutch, and for a blonde, blue-eyed sex symbol there were plenty of fringe benefits.
"We could walk into a party and I could look around the room and know exactly the lady that would head for David," says his second wife Karen.
By 1979, everyone involved in Starsky & Hutch had had enough of the constant pressure. Soul reinvented himself as a pin-up pop star.
But found his fame increasingly difficult to cope with. Drink led to attacks of rage and in 1983, during his marriage to third wife Patti, his frustrations erupted in the form of domestic violence.
He describes returning home one day in a fury and beating his wife: "I remember awful, awful remorse in the moment it happened."
He was ordered to attend therapy classes, but his wider punishment was disgrace in Hollywood. Nobody wanted to work with him.
In the 90s, Soul came to Britain to appear in the musical Blood Brothers. He liked London, remained and even produced a West End play, successfully sueing columnist Matthew Wright who called it "the worst play I have ever seen"...without actually having seen it.
Of late, he and Glaser have had to stand by and watch as Stiller and Wilson adopted their former identities in a merciless parody.
Soul said he admired the stars, but added: "They ain't Starsky or Hutch. The decision to make this kind of picture is an insult to the intelligence of the audience and the real warm feelings that Starsky & Hutch still engenders."
Soul has now reined in some of his criticisms, but in the documentary he attacks the scene in which Wilson mockingly sings one of his best known hits. "I think it's a pretty cheap shot, frankly," he says.