Erik Estrada

Before the motorcycle, Erik Estrada was a young New York actor taking whatever came: Nicky Cruz in The Cross and the Switchblade in 1970, Sergio in The New Centurions, Julio in Airport 1975, a pilot in Midway, a man in a restaurant so far back in Silent Movie that the credit is uncredited. Then CHiPs arrived in 1977 and ran to 1983, and for most of that run he was Frank Poncherello, one half of a California Highway Patrol double act.

What he had was not range, and he has never pretended otherwise. It was wattage. Poncherello grins his way through traffic stops with a warmth no amount of stunt footage could manufacture, and the show worked because a viewer believed this cop was pleased to see them. That likability turned out to be transferable. In the late eighties he moved into Spanish-language telenovelas, playing Teniente Rocha in Rosa Salvaje and a lead in Two Women, One Road, and built a working life in a market that had nothing to do with the American network that made him.

The third act is the interesting one, because he understood the joke before anybody else did. He plays himself in National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 and again in National Lampoon's Van Wilder, plays a paramedic in the 2017 film that remade his own show, voices Marco on Sealab 2021 for Adult Swim, and turns up as Agent Ponch in Americano. Reality television and hosting filled the rest. Very few actors get one signature role. Fewer still spend decades cheerfully renting it out.