10 Actors Who Begged For Their TV Characters To Die

1. John Diehl - Miami Vice

Why He Wanted To Die

John Diehl played the fan favourite goofball role of Detective Lawrence "Larry" Zito on Miami Vice for two full seasons, after which he requested to be offed for two reasons - he was sick of living in Miami to shoot the show, and he wanted to return to stage acting.

Diehl earned more than $200,000 for his work on the show's second season, but desperately sought greater artistic fulfilment elsewhere.

He said of the bold move, "I learned a lot doing 'Vice,' but I really didn't feel I could go any further, the way they were writing for the character...I read somewhere - I think it was Ron Howard quoting Henry Fonda - that unless you do something different every 18 months, change your career, scare yourself, you're not growing. I needed to keep growing."

How It Happened

Zito ends up killed half-way through the show's third season, when an undercover mission goes wrong and he gets injected with a fatal overdose of cocaine at the order of drug smuggler Oswaldo Guzman (Pepe Serna).

In the three-plus decades since his departure, Diehl has carved out a fine niche for himself as a reliable character actor on stage and in TV and film. So, if he wasn't in need of that fat Miami Vice payday, you can't really knock his decision making here.