Television fans were devastated to learn of the passing of David Soul, one-half of the iconic Starsky & Hutch duo, embodying David Starsky opposite Paul Michael Glaser as Sergeant Kenneth Richard “Hutch” Hutchinson. The two worked together in over 90 episodes across four seasons, and following Soul’s death, Glaser found himself mourning not just a colleague but a dear friend.
Soul was 80 years old when he died on January 4, 2024. For five decades, Soul would smoke three packs of cigarettes a day. Although he’d dropped the habit years before his death, he was afflicted with COPD and had a lung removed due to cancer. Soul was surrounded by family when he died at a London hospital, but Glaser still feels that he has lost a member of his own family with his passing.
Paul Michael Glaser considered David Soul a brother
After news of Soul’s death circulated, Glaser discussed the full extent of their relationship as coworkers, confirming that the partnership they had on-screen transcended into real life. There, it only continued to flourish into something even more powerful.
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“David was a brother, a friend, a caring man,” Glaser said of Soul in a statement to PEOPLE. “We shall never see his like again.”
For Glaser, time moved strangely in the days surrounding Glaser’s death. “I find it difficult to comprehend David’s passing. Seems only yesterday that we were sharing loving insults on the phone,” he added. “It just takes time, I tell myself,” he went on. “Saying goodbye to such a dear friend and important part of my life, I suspect that I will let myself feel his loss, our loss, only gradually.”
‘Starsky & Hutch’ bonded them and their respective families for life
Glaser continued to have a front-row seat to Soul’s life long after the cameras stopped rolling in 1979. He had nothing but gratitude for Soul’s wife, Helen Snell, who “loved and cherished” Soul and “stood beside him through these difficult years,” adding, “He could never tell me enough what she meant to him.”
Soul had been married four times before tying the knot with Snell in 2010; his previous marriages lasted anywhere from one year to almost ten until he met her. Snell, 31 years his junior, worked as a public relations expert for the British stage production of Deathtrap while he also worked in the play. The two had been in a relationship since 2002 and Soul would call her his “soulmate.”
Sadly, the actor’s deteriorating state was not news to Glaser, although he did not anticipate the speed at which his health would collapse. Glaser revealed, “We spoke about a week and a half before he died, and even though I knew he hadn’t been doing well for a while, because he and I would talk about it a lot, I just didn’t know how fast it was happening.”