Ken Wahl - Wiseguy

After appearing in the ensemble of The Dirty Dozen: The Next Mission (1985), Wahl was cast in the lead role of Vinnie Terranova in the television series Wiseguy in 1987. The show ran until 1990 and brought Wahl a Golden Globe award and Emmy Award nominations for Best Actor. Wahl wrote an episode of Wiseguy in 1989 and directed an episode in 1990. During the second season, he injured himself again, on an episode directed by Jan Eliasberg. As Wahl recalled in 2004, "She had me walking into my own POV shot, and ... I was stepping up, and the wheel caught my right heel and it just ripped out the Achilles tendon. ... But she wanted to do it again, so I said, 'Okay, you're the boss.'" Series creator Steven J. Cannell said the camera ran over Wahl and second time, leaving him in such pain Cannell replaced him for three episodes while Wahl healed.

He went on to star in the films The Taking of Beverly Hills (1991), Search for Grace (1994), and the The Favor (1994), as well as a Wiseguy reunion TV-movie in 1996, his final screen performance.

Wahl claimed that in 1992 he had endured another motorcycle crash, but eventually confessed to having fallen down a flight of stairs at the home of comedian Rodney Dangerfield's girlfriend and eventual wife, Joan Child. "We were dating casually," Wahl said in 2004. "I stayed over at her house one night, fell down these stairs, and she begged me not to say that in the press." As his official biography describes the incident,

n August of 1992 ... Ken accidentally fell down some slippery marble stairs at a friend’s home, causing his neck to break and his spinal column to be injured. Because his friend was in the public eye, she asked Ken not to say where the accident occurred. So, later on, when the media inquired about the scar on his neck, Ken simply offered the explanation that he had broken his neck in a motorcycle accident, in a sincere effort to protect the privacy of his friend.

Wahl, blaming a "botched" surgery and the refusal of doctors to prescribe pain medication, said he told himself, "Okay, I can't get a prescription, so I'll get a bottle of vodka. I was in such chronic, agonizing pain 24 hours a day that I started drinking to kill the pain." After gaining weight through lack of exercise, and with a growing alcohol problem, he worked 16 days on the reunion movie "and barely got through it. That's when I knew I couldn't do it anymore."