Adam Rich, child star from Eight is Enough, dead at 54 | 24CA News

Adam Rich, the kid actor with a pageboy mop-top haircut who charmed TV audiences because the youngest baby on Eight is Enough, died Saturday. He was 54.

Rich died at his residence within the Brentwood part of Los Angeles, mentioned Lt. Aimee Earl of the Los Angeles County Medical-Examiner Coroner’s workplace. The reason for loss of life was beneath investigation however was not thought of to be suspicious.

Rich had a restricted appearing profession after starring at age eight as Nicholas Bradford, the youngest of eight kids, on the ABC hit dramedy that ran from from 1977 to 1981.

Betty Buckley, who performed his stepmother on the present, mentioned on Instagram that she was shocked to study of his loss of life Sunday and referred to Rich as a light-weight, her younger pal on set and good friend ever since.

“I adored him and loved working with him,” mentioned Buckley. “He was so sweet, funny, fresh and natural. He brought a lot of joy to all of us on the show and to our audiences.”

Corey Feldman and Todd Bridges, baby actors who additionally endured struggles later in life, expressed their condolences on social media.

‘Generous, loving soul’

Rich’s public life after stardom was just like that of different baby actors whose promising careers have been later derailed by medicine and alcohol, and run-ins with the regulation.

He was arrested for driving beneath the affect in 2002 after almost hanging a parked California Highway Patrol cruiser in a freeway lane closed for upkeep. He was arrested in April 1991 for trying to interrupt right into a pharmacy, and in October of that 12 months for allegedly stealing a drug-filled syringe at a hospital the place he was being handled for a dislocated shoulder.

Rich suffered from melancholy and unsuccessfully tried experimental cures over time, mentioned publicist Danny Deraney. He mentioned he and others near Rich have been apprehensive in current weeks once they could not attain him.

“He was just a very kind, generous, loving soul,” Deraney advised 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 mentioned his psychological well being on social media and famous in October that he’d been sober for seven years. He mentioned he wasn’t good — referring to arrests, many stints in rehab, a number of overdoses and numerous detoxes and relapses — and urged his almost 19,000 followers to by no means quit.

Rich was the little brother to a technology of TV viewers because the mop-top son of a newspaper columnist performed by Dick Van Patten, who has to lift eight kids alone after his spouse within the present — and the actress who performed her — died throughout filming of the primary season.

But the stability of his appearing profession was in single-episode appearances as a youth or younger grownup on a few of the hottest TV exhibits of the time: The Love Boat, The Six Million Dollar Man, Silver Spoons, and Baywatch.

Rich starred within the sequence Code Red from 1981-82 and voiced the character of Presto the Magician on Dungeons & Dragons from 1983-85, based on the IMDB.com. He reprised his best-known function in two Eight is Enough TV film reunions.

Rich made a cameo look as himself in 2003’s Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star starring David Spade.