Adam Wealthy, former ‘Eight Is Sufficient’ little one star, dies at 54 – Nationwide

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 residence within the Brentwood part of Los Angeles, in accordance with Lt. Aimee Earl of the Los Angeles County Medical-Examiner Coroner’s workplace. The reason for dying is below investigation however is just not thought-about to be suspicious.

Wealthy had a restricted appearing profession after starring at age 8 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 be taught of his dying Sunday and referred to Wealthy as her “younger pal” on set and pal ever since.

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

Wealthy’s public life after stardom was just like that different little one 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 practically putting a parked California Freeway Patrol cruiser in a freeway lane closed for upkeep. He was arrested in April 1991 for making an attempt 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 despair that defied therapy 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 once they couldn’t attain him.

“He was only a very sort, beneficiant, loving soul,” Deraney instructed The Related Press. “Being a well-known actor is just not essentially what he needed 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 excellent — referring to arrests, many stints in rehab, a number of overdoses and “numerous detoxes (and) relapses” — and urged his practically 19,000 followers to by no means hand over.

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

Wealthy was the little brother to a era of TV viewers because the 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.

Wealthy starred within the sequence “Code Pink” from 1981-82 and voiced the character of Presto the Magician on Dungeons & Dragons from 1983-85, in accordance with 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 a few of the hottest TV reveals 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 in 2003.

0:31
Canadian music legend Ian Tyson lifeless at 89

Earlier Video

Subsequent Video

&copy 2023 The Canadian Press