US actor Joe Lara, best known for playing Tarzan, is presumed dead after a plane crash in Tennessee.

The 58-year-old is among seven people believed killed when a light aircraft crashed into a lake near the town of Smyrna on Saturday.

His dietician spouse, Gwen Shamblin Lara, who founded a weight-loss church, can also be one of the victims.

Rescue workers say that they found wreckage and human remains at the crash website.

Mr Lara played the lead role in the 1989 TV movie Tarzan in Manhattan earlier reprising the role in the follow-up TV series Tarzan: The Epic Adventures.

He also gave up acting in 2002 to pursue a career in country music.

His wife, 66, was the chief of a Christian weight-loss group named Weigh Down Ministries that she started in 1986.

She composed a best-selling faith-based weight-loss book, urging people to”turn away from the love of food and towards the love of God”, and based the Remnant Fellowship Church at Brentwood in 1999, based on her website.

The Laras’ Cessna C501 airplane was carrying seven people when it crashed at around 11:00 local time (17:00 GMT) on Saturday, soon after taking off from Smyrna airport en route to Palm Beach, Florida, officials said.

The small jet went down into Percy Priest Lake, roughly 12 miles (19km) south of Nashville.

As well Mr and Mrs Lara, also on board was Mrs Laras’ son-in-law, Brandon Hannah, as well as the couples Jennifer and David Martin, and Jessica and Jonathan Walters.

By Saturday night, rescue workers said that they were shifting their operations from rescue to recovery as there appeared to be no survivors.

Rescuers had found”a number of elements of this aircraft as well as human remains” in a debris field about half a mile broad.

The Remnant Fellowship church released a statement, saying it had lost some of its”greatest and most loving” leaders at a”horrible tragedy.”

It described Mrs Lara as a”gentle, and selfless mom and spouse” who’d lived”every day laying down her own life to ensure that others might get a relationship with God”.