The golden years of Richard Hatch !
By Alan Webb, Ciné Télé Revue, 1989	Home   Cette page en Français

When Michael Douglas decides to leave, in September 1976, the show The Streets of San Francisco, the producers immediately looked for a substitute to him. They did not miss of postulants. The show, very, popular, guaranteed to the future elected one some celebrity the following day. Among more than two hundred candidates, Richard Hatch was selected to succeed Michael Douglas.

At the end of the Seventies, Richard Hatch had lived a fast ascension. He had appeared as "guest star" in about all the great successes of the moment (Cannon, Kung Fu, Hawaii Five-O...) before knowing the consecration in The Streets of San Francisco. One year later, it was Galactica, an event of the small screen whose budget by episode exceeded the million dollars. "A so fast success is rapturous", remembers Richard Hatch. "I dated three or four girls at the same time. I liked to meet women who felt themselves as evolved as I thought I was... Younger, I was terribly shy so much so that, even if a girl liked me, I did not even realize it. Suddenly, the whole world was interested in me and it was a voluptuous impression, a kind of compensation."

In spite of an immediate triumph, Galactica (starring also Dirk Benedict of The A-Team and Lorne Greene of Bonanza) remained only two years on the network ABC, the producers not managing to support the enormous cost of this super-production.

Since then, Richard Hatch knows a little empty period. He played in particular a part of a paintings seller for some time in Dynasty. But the destiny however did not smile to him more largely. It is true that his attitude discouraged more than one director to work with him. "I needed to feel I was the star, the king, the center of the world. I took pleasure to criticize the other ones errors because thus, I felt higher. It is a thing that I do not do any more today, I know that I made too many mistakes... With my problems, I chose the worst solution : to transfer the responsibility on others. I made myself unbearable and nobody wanted to work with me any more, it is simple."

The way of glory is often full of obstacles rather than petals of roses. "Since that, I realized that it is not always good, in the final analysis, to have too much, too young and too quickly. When everyone around you repeats that you are wonderful and full of talent, you end up believing it a little. Then, one day, when the wave of the admiring compliments is dried up, all your universe collapses. It is like a drug, you cannot do without it..."