His biggest breakthrough was the male ingenue part in the ABC miniseries “The Winds of War” (1983), based on Herman Wouk’s bestselling novel set during World War II. He was the hitman apprentice to Charles Bronson in “The Mechanic” (1972) and a handsome young stuntman in “Hooper” (1978), with Burt Reynolds as an aging one.Ī rare departure from form was “Buster and Billie” (1974), an unsentimental look at 1940s high school students in rural Georgia, with Vincent giving an understated performance as the local jock who breaks with social conformity and expectations - with violent results. With a surfer’s physique and charisma, Vincent entered films in the late 1960s and became a mainstay of action dramas. He was 74 by most accounts, but the certificate listed him as 73. 10 death - which was not publicly announced at the time - was confirmed by the Buncombe County Register of Deeds, which provided a death certificate listing the cause as cardiac arrest.
Jan-Michael Vincent, a golden boy of Hollywood action films in the 1970s who starred in the mid-1980s TV adventure series “Airwolf” but saw his career crater amid drug and alcohol addiction, has died in Asheville, N.C.
