Adam Rich Death – The former ‘Eight Is enough’ child star, dies at age 54
Adam Rich, the pageboy topped child actor who charmed the TV audiences as “America’s little brother” on At Is Enough, has died.
He was 54 years old. Rich was died Saturday at his home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles, said Lt. Amy Earl of the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office of the Coroner.
The cause of the death was under investigation but was not considered suspicious. Rich had a limited acting career after starring at age eight as Nicholas Bradford, the youngest of eight children in the ABC, hit dramedy from 1977 to 1981.
He had several altercations with police related to drugs and alcohol – and sought treatment at the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage.
Publicist Danny Derain said Rich suffered from a form of depression that defied treatment and sought to remove the stigma around talking about mental illness. He unsuccessfully tried experimental cures for years.
Diane said she and others close to Rich were concerned when they could not reach him in recent weeks. “He was a very kind, generous, loving soul,” Diane told The Press. “Being a famous actor isn’t necessarily what he wanted to be. … He had no ego, not an ounce of it.
Rich discussed his mental health on Twitter and noted in October that he had been sober for seven years.
He said he was not perfect – citing arrests, multiple stints in rehab, multiple overdoses, and “countless detox (and) relapses” – and urged his nearly 19,000 followers never to give up.
In September, Rich tweeted, “Human beings were not made to endure mental illness.” “The mere fact that some people consider them to be weak, or lacking willpower, is utterly ridiculous… because it is the total opposite!
It takes a very strong person… a warrior if you will. .. To fight such diseases.” Rich posted a photo from his heyday with former child star Mickey Rooney. “Everyone used to tell me, ‘You’re the modern Mickey Rooney,'” he tweeted.
“But when Mickey Rooney himself told me, it meant helluva more to me!” Nearly 27 years ago, Rich participated in a hoax published by May magazine about the actor being killed in a 1996 robbery outside a Los Angeles nightclub.
The little-known magazine article was intended as a satire of America’s celebrity obsession but failed when the spoof was exposed. “I think we were a little too subtle.
People weren’t getting the joke,” Rich later told the Chicago Tribune. “I do not wanna die.” Rich was the younger brother of a generation of TV viewers as the mop-top son of a newspaper columnist, played by Dick Van Patten, who had to raise eight children alone after his wife on the show — and Actress Wali – died during the filming of the first season.
According to IMDB.com, Rich starred in the series Code Red from 1981–82 and voiced the character Presto the Magician on Dungeons & Dragons from 1983–85. He reprised his most famous role in two Eight Is Enough TV movie reunions.
But his acting career balances out with single-episode appearances on some of the most popular TV shows of the time: The Love Boat, The Six Million Dollar Man, Silver Spoons, and Baywatch. His most recent credit on IMDB was playing Crocodile Dundee on Reel Comedy in 2003.
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