Biographie
American actor Michael Cole is best remembered as a main protagonist in TV's The Mod Squad (1968). His character, the tousle-haired Pete Cochran, was one of a trio of ex-juvenile delinquents recruited as undercover cops (his co-stars were Clarence Williams III and Peggy Lipton) tasked with infiltrating places where regular police could not venture. The show, brainchild of former LAPD undercover narcotics cop Buddy Ruskin, dealt with hitherto neglected social issues such as child abuse, domestic violence, stalking, racism, the illegal drug trade, abortion and police brutality. It was also rare, in that almost no violence was used in bringing assorted criminals to justice. In fact, the trio carried out their job without toting weapons. Cole was picked for the role by executive producer Aaron Spelling, since he seemed to personify the rebellious spirit of 1960's counterculture.
Cole never knew his biological father and spent his early childhood, along with his mother and older brother, at his grandmother's house. He started drinking from the age of twelve. By his mid-teens, he had dropped out of school, run away from his home in Madison, and, in his own words, "bummed around, drifting, drinking, chasing chicks..." He married his girlfriend and fathered two children before getting divorced at the age of twenty. All the while, Cole (barely) made ends meet by variously bartending, clerking and working as a pizza cook. Having moved to Los Angeles, he was essentially a derelict --- penniless and sleeping rough - when a meeting with renowned acting coach Estelle Harman (1922-1995) changed his life. Harman saw his potential. According to a 2018 interview with Cole, she "gave him free lessons and let him sleep on a bed on the stage of her workshop."
Cole made his debut on the big screen starring in a low budget sci-fi flic called The Bubble (1966). He also played a U.S. Army deserter in the western Chuka (1967), but his career made little headway until Aaron Spelling persuaded him to take on the Pete Cochran part for Mod Squad. Despite initial misgivings ("I didn't want to play some guy who ratted on some other troubled kids"), he relented after reading some of the early scripts and went on to appear in all five seasons of the show. Cole later re-united with the cast for a somewhat tepid telemovie, The Return of Mod Squad (1979), as well as guest-starring in diverse series, including Get Christie Love! (1974), Police Story (1973), Vega$ (1978) and Murder, She Wrote (1984). In 1991, he had a recurring (villainous) role in the medical soap General Hospital (1963). In Stephen King's original miniseries IT (1990), he played Henry Bowers, a vicious bully who does the bidding of the shapeshifting entity, most often seen as 'Pennywise the Clown'.
A year before his retirement from acting, Cole published his autobiography entitled "I Played the White Guy", detailing his career, as well as ongoing struggles with drug and alcohol addiction, finally overcome (at the insistence of his second wife) following rehab at the Betty Ford Center in 1994.
Michael Cole died on December 10 2024 at the age of 84.
