David Hasselhoff appeared alarmingly frail while being transported in a wheelchair at the airport on Monday, just weeks following the tragic passing of his ex-wife Pamela Bach.

Exclusive images obtained by the Daily Mail captured the 72-year-old actor being assisted through the terminal by airport staff in both Cancun, Mexico, and upon his return to Los Angeles.

Upon getting out of the wheelchair, Hasselhoff, dressed in a striped button-down shirt and dark baseball cap, relied heavily on his wife Hayley Roberts, 45, as he left the airport.

Despite his attempts to put on a happy face – flashing a smile, thumbs up and waving to the cameras – insiders say the actor’s old hard-partying lifestyle is catching up with him.

‘David is living on borrowed time and has lived hard,’ a source close to Hasselhoff told the Daily Mail.

‘He had a life that people could only dream of but he also spent decades self-medicating through alcohol and other substances, which he does regret.’

The source added that Hasselhoff’s health ‘has been declining for some time now,’ a result of ‘decades of alcoholism.’

While limping through LAX, the Baywatch star tried to dismiss concerns, telling photographs he is due to have knee surgery.

‘He is in his 70s and has had several major operations including having a defibrillator fitted to prevent a heart attack,’ our source said. ‘He is sober now but knows that every surgery could be the last.’ 

Hasselhoff’s struggle with alcohol addiction reportedly torpedoed his marriage with Bach, his second wife, who took her own life aged 61 in her Hollywood Hills home on March 5.

Paramedics were called to the actress’s residence and discovered she had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Hasselhoff, who was spotted looking gaunt days after Bach’s death, said through his spokesperson that his family ‘is deeply saddened’ by her passing. 

He was noticeably absent from Bach’s funeral.

The pair met on the set of Hasselhoff’s sci-fi series Knight Rider in 1986. At the time, he was married to his first wife and co-star Catherine Hickland, and Bach was seeing a comedian.

In 1989, Hasselhoff and Hickland divorced, and he met Bach again on the set of Baywatch, where she had landed a small role. After nine months of dating, she was pregnant – and they expedited their wedding.

The couple were married for 17 years, from 1989 to 2006, before their nasty Hollywood divorce was reportedly a result of Hasselhoff’s drinking and Bach’s inability to take care of him after a motorcycle injury in 2003 that left her with lifelong pain.

In a 2008 interview with the Daily Mail, Bach admitted that ‘The Hoff’ had ‘a drinking problem,’ but that she had protected him and their children – Hayley, now 32, and Taylor, 34.

‘Everybody thought he was the golden star in swimming trunks on the beach with Pamela Anderson but the drink was taking over his life. To me, he was the man who fell over on the bedroom floor,’ she said.

‘He has a disease, just like cancer. And just like cancer, it ate away at our family from the inside.’

Hasselhoff’s ‘wake-up call’ came in 2007, when a video filmed by his daughter, Taylor, went public, showing him in a drunken stupor struggling to eat a burger. In a 2015 interview with The Mirror, he revealed he was attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

The actor met his third and current wife, Roberts, in 2011. 

The Welsh beauty, nearly three decades his junior, was in Cardiff, where Britain’s Got Talent was being filmed. At the time, ‘The Hoff’ was a judge on the show, and Roberts, accompanied by her younger sister, dared to ask for a picture.

He, in turn, requested her phone number – and the rest is history. 

Hasselhoff popped the question in 2016 and the pair wed in a lavish ceremony in Italy two years later. 

Hasselhoff’s representatives did not respond to requests for comment.