Don't Hassle the Hoff

Prologue: My True Story 'My image is someone else's perception of what my life is like. It's not the truth.' Broadway Opening Night Plymouth Theatre, 31 October 2000 The stage manager asked me, 'Are you all right?' 'Yes, I'm okay. Now remember I'm going to come off stage in between scenes and you're going to tell me who I am.' 'Yes I'll say, "Now you're Jekyll" or "Now you're Hyde".' 'You'll give me my first line and you'll point me in the right direction?' 'Yes. Are you sure you're okay?' I was far from okay. After forty years in show business, my childhood dream was about to come true. It had been a long journey. Knight Rider had made me famous. Baywatch had made me rich. But Broadway had always been my dream. When I had stepped on to the sidewalk that night I could see my name in lights over Times Square. At eight o'clock a hush would fall in the Plymouth Theatre, the overture would begin and I would step on to the stage as the lead in Jekyll and Hyde: The Musical. This would be the greatest night of my career, the pinnacle of my success. And I was terrified. I was terrified because I was not only an actor playing a role, I had something to prove. I had to prove I was more than a guy who talked to a car, that I was more than a guy in red Speedos running in slow motion across a beach. I had to prove my talent to the world. More importantly, I had to prove it to myself. Walking along Forty-Fifth Street, I remembered the saying, 'Luck is being prepared for opportunity when it presents itself.' The question was, 'Was I prepared?' At the theatre, I looked in the dressing-room mirror and said to myself, 'What is wrong with you? Why do you put yourself through this? Are you crazy? You're in the hardest role on Broadway, singing fourteen songs, playing not one character but two. You're opening after only five weeks of rehearsals? You must be crazy.' Yes, I was crazy crazy with excitement, tension and fear. From the age of nine, I had dreamed of starring in a Broadway musical. And when it didn't happen for many years I had lived by these words, 'Never, never, never give up.' Now I had made it except I didn't know if I would be able to speak, let alone sing. I said a prayer, 'God, just get me through the first note.' Then the orchestra started playing, the curtain went up and I caught a look at the audience and I realised this was not a dream this was Broadway. My parents Joe and Dolores were there, my wife Pamela Bach was there with our younger daughter Hayley, my manager Jan McCormack, my lawyers Eric Weissler and Alan Wertheimer, my business managers Bob Philpott and Peter Stoll, my press agent Judy Katz, my friends, my peers in show business, including many other Broadway and Hollywood stars all of them were there. My mother's words came back to me, 'You can do it, David, you were born for the stage.' The first notes came out of my mouth, 'Lost in the darkness, silence surrounds you.Hasselhoff, David is the author of 'Don't Hassle the Hoff ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780312371296 and ISBN 0312371292.