Michael Cole, the actor best known as Pete Cochran, the last of three actors who played hip, young undercover police officers on ABC’s hit show “The Mod Squad,” died on Tuesday. He was 84.
A cause of death was not given. His death was confirmed by Christy Clark of the Stewart Talent Agency, which represented Mr. Cole.
Mr. Cole was a young, struggling actor when he achieved overnight success on the police crime drama “The Mod Squad,” which ran on ABC from 1968 to 1973 and co-starred Peggy Lipton and Clarence Williams III.
“The Mod Squad” was one of the first prime-time series to acknowledge the hippie counterculture and an early example of multiracial casting. It centered on three hippies in trouble with the law, who avoid jail time by joining the police department and working undercover. Mr. Cole was cast as Pete Cochran, a wealthy kid who was kicked out of his parents’ house for stealing a car. Mr. Williams played Linc Hayes, and Ms. Lipton played Julie Barnes.
The trio gave the show one of its taglines: “One black, one white, one blonde.”
The show became a runaway hit, tackling racism, abortion, the Vietnam War and drug abuse. It launched Mr. Cole, whose Hollywood résumé was thin, to fame.
Yet he nearly missed out. In his 2018 memoir, “I Played the White Guy,” Mr. Cole described turning down the role, because he did not want to play a character who ratted on troubled teenagers.
“It sounds stupid, and I hope it never gets on air,” Mr. Cole recalled telling the show’s producer, Aaron Spelling, during the audition. But his attitude was exactly what Mr. Spelling was looking for in Pete Cochran, he said.
Ms. Lipton died in 2019, and Mr. Williams died in 2021. Mr. Cole was the last surviving regular cast member of the series, according to IMDB.
Michael Cole was born on July 3, 1940, in Madison, Wis. Mr. Cole never knew his biological father, who abandoned him, his mother and his older brother when he was born. Mr. Cole dropped out of high school, got married at 16 and had two children, and was divorced by 20. He also began drinking at a young age, an addiction he opened up about in interviews and in his memoir.
Mr. Cole left Wisconsin and moved to Las Vegas, where he worked as a bartender and met Bobby Darin, a pop singer, who encouraged Mr. Cole to pursue his dreams of acting.
He headed farther west to Los Angeles and at times lived under freeways as he tried to navigate Hollywood, he said. He took acting classes with a coach named Estelle Harman, who offered him a place to sleep at her workshop and whom he credits with seeing his potential, he said in a 2018 interview on “Making It With Terry Wollman.”
In 1966, Mr. Cole’s appeared on an episode of “Gunsmoke” and had minor roles in other shows before landing “The Mod Squad.”
“The first P.R. tour we went on, the lady that went with us said, ‘Your lives are never gonna be the same,’” Mr. Cole said in a 2007 interview with Movieweb. “I had no idea what that meant.”
In 1991, he appeared in 64 episodes of “General Hospital” as the villainous Harlan Barrett, a drug cartel member who was killed off. Mr. Cole’s other television credits include “Get Christie Love!,” “Police Story,” “The Love Boat,” “CHiPs,” “Murder, She Wrote,” “Acapulco Bay,” “7th Heaven,” “It” and “ER.”
Alongside Ms. Lipton and Mr. Williams, Mr. Cole reprised his role in the 1979 television movie “Return of Mod Squad.” He also appeared in other television movies including “The Last Child (1971),” “Mystery Woman (2003),” “Mystery Woman: At First Sight (2006)” and “Grave Misconduct (2008).”
Throughout his career, Mr. Cole struggled with alcoholism. In 1994, at the urging of his wife. Shelley Funes, Cole entered rehab at the Betty Ford Center, he said. He credited her with his decades of sobriety.
A list of survivors was not immediately available.
In the 2007 interview with Movieweb, Mr. Cole reflected on his journey from living on the streets to landing a starring role in a hit television series, calling himself “extremely lucky.”
“I always try to give back, with acting, to the fans — actually, I never called them fans, it’s always been friends,” Mr. Cole said. “If you work as hard, as an actor, as you should by all the gifts you’re given, you’ll be all right, because you’re saying thanks to the friends, all the time.”
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