Michael “Newmie” Newman, the real-life lifeguard who appeared for 10 seasons on Baywatch as one of action show’s most popular characters, has died after his long battle with Parkinson’s disease. He was 67.
Newman died Sunday at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Matthew Felker, the writer, director and producer behind the new Hulu docuseries After Baywatch: Moment in the Sun, told The Hollywood Reporter. He was diagnosed in 2006.
“This terminal disease has allowed me a lot of thinking time, which I maybe didn’t want, but it’s brought me wisdom,” Newman told People magazine two months ago.
A onetime Iron Man competitor and firefighter who was 6-foot-5 and 250 pounds in his prime, Newman was the only Baywatch castmember who actually worked as a Los Angeles County lifeguard, having started out as a junior lifeguard in the shadow of the Santa Monica Pier when he was 10.
He appeared on 109 episodes from 1989-2000 during the show’s first 10 seasons — the first one on NBC, the next nine in syndication — and only David Hasselhoff and Jeremy Jackson were on more. Baywatch would become a global phenomenon, airing in more than 140 countries around the world.
He then went back to being a full-time firefighter.
Newman’s father was a member of the British national water polo team, and his mom was a swimming teacher.
He graduated from Palisades Charter High School, competed on the swim teams at Santa Monica City College and UC Santa Barbara and worked as a lifeguard for more than two decades before Baywatch beckoned. (His elder brother, Mark, was an L.A. County lifeguard as well.)
“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 in the 2007 book Hometown Santa Monica. “He couldn’t pay me, but he promised if it went, 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 in the 1989 pilot telefilm Baywatch: Panic at Malibu Pier and on the first episode of Baywatch and usually appeared uncredited in other early installments. As he went along, he did stunts in the water that nobody else could handle and offered tips to the writers about rescue scenes; all that eventually got him some dialogue.
“I was too useful for them to get rid of me,” he told People in another 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 series after the 10th season that was set in Hawaii; the show lasted just one more season.
Newman also was on three episodes of the syndicated spinoff Baywatch Nights in 1996 and in the 1998 straight-to-video film Baywatch: White Thunder at Glacier Bay.
In addition to his brother, survivors include his wife of 36 years, Sarah; their son, Chris (another L.A. lifeguard), and daughter, Emily; their granddaughter, Charlie; and a sister.
Newman, who attempted to fend off Parkinson’s through a rigorous exercise routine, was diagnosed 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 told People.
Chris Gardner contributed to this report.
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