On Tuesday, in San Clemente, California, of unknown circumstances, passed away Lance Kerwin, a former child actor who became famous in the late 1970s as the lead of the occasionally contentious NBC adolescent drama series James at 15. His age was 62.
His daughter Savanah made the announcement of his passing in a Facebook post earlier today. In 1979, Kerwin starred in the TV miniseries Salem’s Lot, which was adapted from Stephen King’s novel.
Kerwin had a busy 1970s acting career. Mark Petrie, the youthful horror film fan turned vampire hunter, was portrayed by him. Floating ghostly outside Mark’s bedroom window is a former classmate who has turned into a vampire and pays him a visit in the film’s most terrifying and unforgettable sequence.
Although Kerwin made guest appearances on series like Emergency!, Wonder Woman, and Little House on the Prairie in the early to mid-1970s, his breakout role was in 1977, when he was fifteen years old, with James.
Dan Wakefield, who created and wrote the coming-of-age drama series, aimed to give a more realistic picture of teens than what was typical at the time. When James aged 16, played by Kerwin, lost his virginity to a Swedish exchange student in 1978, the program became a media darling.
Kerwin later co-starred with Scott Baio, who played an adolescent alcoholic, in the TV movie The Boy Who Drank Too Much, which was released two years after.
Throughout the mid-1990s, Kerwin kept performing, most notably as a TV guest star. He had left performing for a career in youth ministry before the decade’s end.
He joined the U-Turn for Christ ministry and subsequently relocated to Hawaii. Kerwin had a rough go of it in 2021 due to a number of health problems, according to a GoFundMe website.
Fox, Terah, Kailani, and Justus are his children, and he is also survived by Savanah. In the weeks to come, details on the afterlife ceremony will be announced.
If you want up-to-date information about other people’s deaths, including obituaries, autopsy reports, and causes of death, you should visit lakecountyfloridanews.com.
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