Erik Estrada Biography

Fast Facts

• Raised in New York City's Spanish Harlem
• As a child, aspired to be a police officer
• Began acting career by performing in high-school productions
• Played a streetwise gang member in his film debut in 1970's The Cross and the Switchblade
• Gained fame as motorcycle cop Frank "Ponch" Poncherello in the 1977-83 TV series CHiPs
• Reportedly clashed with the show's costar, Larry Wilcox
• Suffered a serious, life-threatening injury in a 1979 accident while filming a motorcycle scene on the CHiPs set
• Cast in a Spanish-speaking soap opera (Dos Mujeres, Un Camino) in 1993
• Ironically, he didn't speak Spanish and had to take Spanish lessons for the role
• Penned an autobiography, My Road from Harlem to Hollywood, in the 1990s
• An antidrug advocate, serving as a spokesman for D
• A
• R
• E
• (Drug Abuse Resistance Education)
• Earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2007