Malcolm-Jamal Warner, the actor who played teenage son Theo Huxtable on The Cosby Show, has died at the age of 54 in an accidental drowning in Costa Rica, local authorities say.

Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigation Department said on Monday (local time) that Warner drowned on Sunday on a beach on the country’s Caribbean coast.

He was swimming at Playa Grande de Cocles in Limon province when a current pulled him deeper into the ocean.

“He was rescued by people on the beach,” the department’s initial report said but first responders from the Red Cross found him without vital signs and he was taken to the morgue.

Warner featured in a pilot-episode argument with Bill Cosby’s Cliff Huxtable about money and an ear piercing he tries to hide from his dad.

His Theo was the only son among four daughters in the household of Huxtable and Phylicia Rashad’s Clair Huxtable on the NBC sitcom. He was one of the prime representations of teenage boyhood on a show that was the most popular in the US for much of its run from 1984 to 1992.

He played the role for eight seasons in all 197 episodes, winning an Emmy nomination for supporting actor in a comedy in 1986.

For many the lasting image of the character, and of Warner, is of him wearing a badly botched mock designer shirt sewed by his sister Denise, played by Lisa Bonet.

Cosby was among those to pay tribute to the star on Monday (US time). He told People magazine that Warner’s death reminded him of the death of his son, Ennis William Cosby, who was shot and killed in an attempted robbery in Los Angeles in 1997, at the age of 27.

“[It] reminded him of the same call he received when his son died,” Cosby spokesman Andrew Wyatt told the magazine.

Wyatt said the pair had last spoken three months ago, and that Cosby believed Warner died “doing what he loved”.

“He had just done a concert in Minnesota and called Mr Cosby and talked about it. They spoke all the time,” Wyatt said.

Another Cosby Show co-star, Geoffrey Owens, said his heart went out to Warner’s family.

“This tragedy has almost left me speechless,” Owens – who played Elvin Tibideaux from the show’s second series – told Deadline.

“Malcolm was a lovely man; a sweet and sensitive soul. I respected him for many reasons, including the fact that he genuinely loved the act of creation. He had the mind of an actor and the heart of a musician.

“He was generous, too. I did a theatre project long ago and asked him to participate; and he was there for me. My heart goes out to his family.”

Warner kept his private life to himself. He was known to be the father of a young daughter, believed to be aged about eight.

Neither his daughter nor his wife have been publicly named.

with AAP