Michael “Newmie” Newman, the real-life lifeguard who appeared for 10 seasons on Baywatch as one among motion present’s hottest characters, has died after his lengthy battle with Parkinson’s illness. He was 67.
“This terminal disease has allowed me a lot of thinking time, which I maybe didn’t want, but it’s brought me wisdom,” Newman informed Individuals journal two months in the past.
A onetime Iron Man competitor and firefighter who was 6-foot-5 and 250 kilos in his prime, Newman was the one Baywatch castmember who really labored as a Los Angeles County lifeguard, having began out as a junior lifeguard within the shadow of the Santa Monica Pier when he was 10.
As Newmie, he appeared on 109 episodes from 1989-2000 throughout the present’s first 10 seasons — the primary one on NBC, the following 9 in syndication — and solely David Hasselhoff and Jeremy Jackson had been on extra. Baywatch would develop into a worldwide phenomenon, airing in additional than 140 international locations all over the world.
He then went again to being a full-time firefighter for L.A. County — throughout the run of the present, he by no means really left his job.
Newman was born in San Francisco on April 26, 1957, and raised in Brentwood in Los Angeles. His mother and father had been from England; his father, additionally Michael, was a member of the British nationwide water polo workforce, and his mother, Joan, was a swimming trainer. (His people additionally ran Arthur Murray ballroom dance academies.)
He graduated from Palisades Constitution Excessive College, starred on the swim groups at Santa Monica Metropolis Faculty and UC Santa Barbara and labored as a lifeguard for greater than 20 years earlier than Baywatch beckoned. (His brother Mark was an L.A. County lifeguard as effectively.)
“Because I looked the part, fellow guard Greg Bonnan [co-creator of Baywatch] asked me to be in a teaser tape to sell the concept,” Newman recalled within the 2007 guide Hometown Santa Monica. “He couldn’t pay me, but he promised if it went [on the air], there would be a job in it for me. It was a day in the life of a lifeguard: rescue the kids, break up the fight, meet the chick, walk off into the sunset — you know, just like real life.”
Newman was within the 1989 pilot telefilm Baywatch: Panic at Malibu Pier and on the primary episode of Baywatch and often appeared uncredited in most early installments. As he went alongside, he did stunts within the water that no person else may deal with and provided tricks to the writers about rescue scenes; all that ultimately obtained him some dialogue.
“I was too useful for them to get rid of me,” he informed Individuals in one other interview. “I basically started off as a stuntman, and after seven years of being out of the opening credits, I finally was anointed and allowed to be in the front of the show.”
He and Hasselhoff left the sequence after the tenth season that was set in Hawaii; the present lasted only one extra season.
Newman additionally was on three episodes of the syndicated spinoff Baywatch Nights in 1996 and within the 1998 straight-to-video movie Baywatch: White Thunder at Glacier Bay.
Along with Mark and one other brother, Grant, survivors embrace his spouse of 37 years, Sarah; their son, Chris (one other L.A. lifeguard), and daughter, Emily; and their granddaughter, Charlie June.
Donations in his reminiscence will be made to the Michael J. Fox Basis for Parkinson’s Analysis.
Newman, who tried to fend off Parkinson’s by a rigorous train routine, was recognized when he was 50, and “all those things that you thought you were going to do with your children and grandchildren, pictures we were going to take, all the plans I had … stopped,” he informed Individuals.
Chris Gardner contributed to this report.