Adam Rich, ‘Eight Is Enough’ Child Star, Dies at 54

Adam Wealthy, the kid actor with a pageboy mop-top who charmed TV audiences as “America’s little brother” on “Eight is Sufficient,” has died. He was 54.

Wealthy died Saturday at his house 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 below investigation however was not thought-about to be suspicious.

Wealthy had a restricted appearing profession after starring at age 8 as Nicholas Bradford, the youngest of eight youngsters, 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 Wealthy as a “gentle,” her “younger pal” on set and pal ever since.

“I adored him and cherished working with him,” mentioned Buckley, who posted images from the present of the 2 of them collectively on a swing set, on horseback and together with her arm round him whereas he was sleeping. “He was so candy, humorous, recent and pure. He introduced quite a lot of pleasure to all of us on the present and to our audiences.”

Wealthy’s public life after stardom was much like that different youngster actors whose promising careers are later derailed by medicine and alcohol, and run-ins with the regulation.

He was arrested for driving below the affect in 2002 after almost placing a parked California Freeway 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.

Wealthy suffered from a kind of melancholy that defied remedy and he had tried to erase the stigma of speaking about psychological sickness, mentioned publicist Danny Deraney. He unsuccessfully tried experimental cures through the years.

Deraney mentioned he and others near Wealthy had been anxious in latest weeks after they couldn’t attain him.

“He was only a very form, beneficiant, loving soul,” Deraney advised The Related Press. “Being a well-known actor will not be essentially what he wished to be. … He had no ego, not an oz. of it.”

Wealthy mentioned his psychological well being on Twitter 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.

“Human beings weren’t constructed to endure psychological sickness,” Wealthy tweeted in September. “The mere proven fact that some folks take into account these to be weak, or have an absence of will is completely laughable … as a result of it’s the overall reverse! It’s takes a really, very sturdy individual … a warrior if you’ll … to battle such sicknesses.”

Wealthy posted an image of himself from his heyday with one-time youngster star Mickey Rooney.

“Everybody used to say to me, ‘You’re the modern-day Mickey Rooney,’” he tweeted. “However when Mickey Rooney advised me that himself, it meant a helluva much more to me!”

Practically 27 years in the past, Wealthy participated in a hoax that May journal printed in regards to the actor getting killed in a theft outdoors a Los Angeles nightclub in 1996. The article within the little-known journal was meant as a satire of America’s superstar obsession however fizzled when the spoof was revealed.

“I believe we had been slightly too refined. Individuals weren’t getting the joke,” Wealthy later advised the Chicago Tribune. “I don’t wish to be useless.”

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

Wealthy starred within the collection “Code Crimson” 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 Sufficient” TV film reunions.

However the steadiness of his appearing profession was in single-episode appearances on among the hottest TV exhibits of the time: “The Love Boat,” “The Six Million Greenback Man,” “Silver Spoons,” and “Baywatch.” His most up-to-date credit score listed on IMDB was taking part in Crocodile Dundee on “Reel Comedy”