Hollywood is in mourning after the former T.J. Hooker star James Darren died on Monday after battling heart issues. He was 88 years-old.

Darren Passes Away

Darren’s death was confirmed by his son Jim Moret, who said that the actor died peacefully in his sleep at Cedars-Sinai Hospital. Darren had gone to the hospital for an aortic valve replacement. However, doctors found that he was too weak to have the surgery. While he had been able to go home, he quickly had to return to the hospital, where he ultimately passed away.

“I always thought he would pull through,” Moret told The Hollywood Reporter. “Because he was so cool. He was always cool.”

Darren enjoyed a decades-long career in Hollywood. He got his start playing Moondoggie, the dark-haired surfer boy in the 1959 hit movie Gidget alongside Sandra Dee.

“I was in love with Sandra,” Darren later said. “I thought that she was absolutely perfect as Gidget. She had tremendous charm.”

Darren would go on to reprise his role in the sequels Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961) and Gidget Goes to Rome (1963). These films made him popular with young women as a Hollywood heartthrob.

“The defining moment was when I was at a studio in San Francisco and word got out that I was there,” Darren told Los Angeles Magazine in 2015. “Thousands of girls were screaming out front. When I had to leave the building, they tackled me to the ground and pulled pieces of my hair out. The police had to rescue me and took me to the roof until things settled down.”

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Darren’s Singing Career

Aside from acting, Darren was also a talented singer. To land his role in the Gidget movies, he had to convince producers that he could sing.

“They were going to use somebody else’s voice, but I told them I could sing,” he said. “We went into one of the soundstages with a piano player and I sang the song and they said, ‘He can do it.’ Then they put me on their label, Colpix.”

Darren would go on to sing in movies like All the Young Men (1960), Diamond Head (1962), Under the Yum Yum Tree (1963) and For Those Who Think Young (1964). He performed “Almost in Your Arms” at the 1959 Academy Awards and “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World” on the 1964 Oscars telecast.

In the 1980s, Darren joined T.J. Hooker in the show’s second season as the police officer Jim Corrigan. He appeared in 66 episodes of the show from 1982 until it ended in 1986. He starred on the show alongside William Shatner and Heather Locklear, who played his inexperienced partner, Stacy Sheridan.

In the late 1990s, Darren appeared on eight episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as the holographic lounge singer Vic Fontaine. This allowed him to revive his singing career, and he later described it as “one of the most enjoyable” roles he ever played.

Check out one of his performances on Star Trek in the video below.

Darren is survived by Evy Norlund, a former Miss Denmark who he was married to from 1960 until his death. He is also survived by three sons and five grandchildren.

Related: Beloved ‘Hollywood Squares’ Host Peter Marshall Dies At 98

Darren’s Memorable Fan Interaction

Darren had many memorable fan interactions over the years, but there’s one that always stood out to him.

“I was in a pizza shop one day with a friend of mine. I heard this motorcycle pull up, and in walked Bruce Springsteen in his little motorcycle cap, like Brando wore in The Wild One — I guess he left his helmet outside,” he once recounted, saying that he thought to himself, “Oh, I gotta go say hi to him.”

Darren went on to say that he “walked up to him and said, ‘Hi, I don’t want to interrupt you, but my name is James Darren…I just want to tell you I’m a big fan. I love all your stuff.’ “And he said, ‘James Darren? I bought “Goodbye Cruel World” in Freehold, New Jersey.’ Isn’t that sweet?”

Rest in peace, James Darren.

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