LOS ANGELES (AP) — Adam Rich, the kid actor with a pageboy mop-top who charmed TV audiences within the late Nineteen Seventies as “America’s little brother” on “Eight is Enough,” has died. He was 54.
Rich died Saturday within the Brentwood part of Los Angeles, stated Lt. Aimee Earl of the Los Angeles County Medical-Examiner Coroner’s workplace. The reason behind loss of life was underneath investigation however was not thought of to be suspicious.
Rich had a restricted performing profession after enjoying Nicholas Bradford, the youngest of eight kids, on the ABC hit dramedy that ran from from 1977 to 1981.
He had a number of run-ins with police associated to medicine and alcohol — and sought remedy on the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage.
Rich suffered from a sort of despair that defied remedy and he had tried to erase the stigma of speaking about psychological sickness, stated publicist Danny Deraney. He unsuccessfully tried experimental cures through the years and had remained sober.
Deraney stated he and others near Rich had been nervous in current weeks after they couldn’t attain him.
“He was just a very kind, generous, loving soul,” Deraney instructed The Associated Press. “Being a famous actor is not necessarily what he wanted to be … He had no ego, not an ounce of it.”
Rich continuously mentioned his situation on Twitter and famous in October that he’d been sober for seven years. He stated he wasn’t excellent — referring to arrests, many stints in rehab, a number of overdoses and “countless detoxes (and) relapses” — and urged his practically 19,000 followers to by no means quit.
“Human beings weren’t built to endure mental illness,” Rich had tweeted in September. “The mere fact that some people consider those to be weak, or have a lack of will is totally laughable … because it’s the total opposite! It’s takes a very, very strong person … a warrior if you will … to battle such illnesses.”
Rich additionally tweeted an image of himself from his heyday with one-time little one star Mickey Rooney.
“Everyone used to say to me, ‘You are the modern day Mickey Rooney,’” he tweeted. “But when Mickey Rooney told me that himself, it meant a helluva a lot more to me!”
Rich grew to become generally known as the little brother to a technology of TV viewers because the youngest little one to a syndicated newspaper columnist performed by Dick Van Patten, who has to lift eight kids alone after the loss of life of his spouse within the first season of the present.
Rich starred within the collection “Code Red” from 1981-82 and voiced the character of Presto the Magician on “Dungeons and Dragons” from 1983-85. He additionally reprised his most well-known function in two “Eight is Enough” TV film reunions.
But the stability of his performing profession was in single-episode appearances on a few of the hottest TV reveals of the time: “The Love Boat,” “The Six Million Dollar Man,” “Silver Spoons,” and “Baywatch.”
