Actor Michael Cole dies aged 84

Sixties TV star Michael Cole has died at the age of 84.

The actor passed away on Tuesday at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center in California, his publicist Rachel Harris told The Hollywood Reporter. No cause of death has been revealed.

Cole was best known for playing Pete Cochran in the crime drama series The Mod Squad alongside Peggy Lipton and Clarence Williams III between 1968 and 1973.

Until his death, he had been the last surviving member of the counterculture police series as Lipton died in 2019 and Williams passed away two years later. Tige Andrews, who played their mentor, died in 2007.

After the show's original run, the entire cast reunited for The Return of Mod Squad, a 1979 TV movie. When the show was remade into a film in 1999, Lipton and Williams III made cameo appearances but Cole did not. The film, starring Giovanni Ribisi as Pete alongside Claire Danes and Omar Epps, was widely panned and bombed at the box office.

In addition to The Mod Squad, Cole also had a recurring role as Harlan Barrett on the soap General Hospital in 1991 and featured in the 1990 TV adaptation of Stephen King's It, starring Tim Curry as Pennywise the Clown.

His other TV appearances include Murder, She Wrote, ER, Wonder Woman and Diagnosis Murder.

Cole last appeared on screen in 2010.

He is survived by his third wife, Shelley, and three children from his previous marriages.