Tragic Details About Diff'rent Strokes Star Dana Plato
This feature discusses alcohol and drug misuse, addiction, and suicide.
Hollywood's child stars have often faced difficult lives, and that was particularly true for the kids who starred on NBC's "Diff'rent Strokes." The sitcom focused on wealthy New York widower Phillip Drummond (Conrad Bain), who adopts his housekeeper's son after her death. The brothers were played by Todd Bridges and Gary Coleman, while Dana Plato portrayed Drummond's teenage daughter, Kimberly.
For the three young actors, starring in a hit television series proved to be a heady experience, skyrocketing them to a level of fame and fortune they had never before experienced — and, as it ended up, would never again experience in their lives. Growing up on television, experiencing the awkwardness of adolescence in front of four cameras and a live studio audience, is a singularly unique experience. As is discovering that Hollywood has lost interest when those actors are no longer children. Plato, who was slightly older than her co-stars, went through this first and never recovered. Her short, tragic life is a cautionary tale for any parent intent on ushering their talented children into the spotlight.
Plato's story ended in 1999. And her sad, slow descent from childhood superstardom continues to resonate, as highlighted by these tragic details about "Diff'rent Strokes" star Dana Plato.
She became her mother's meal ticket at age 10
Dana Plato was born in 1964 to a 17-year-old mother. She was an infant when she was adopted by Dean and Kay Plato, who divorced when she was just 3 years old. Her adoptive mother had a goal in mind and began bringing her to casting sessions when she was still a baby. Plato began acting professionally at the age of 6 and appeared in more than 250 television commercials.
By the age of 10, Plato had established herself as a successful child actor whose income supported both herself and her mother. After appearing in TV shows like "The Six Million Dollar Man" and films including an uncredited appearance in "Exorcist II: The Heretic," she landed a big role in the comedy "California Suite," playing the daughter of characters played by Alan Alda and Jane Fonda. However, it was an appearance on the D-list talent competition "The Gong Show" that led the 13-year-old to be cast in "Diff'rent Strokes." A producer caught her brief performance and felt she would be ideal for Kimberly.
But that opportunity also presented a conundrum. In addition to acting, Plato was also a talented figure skater, with an eye on landing a spot on the U.S. Olympic figure skating team. Given the demands of churning out 22 episodes of television each season, Plato was forced to make a difficult decision between skating and the sitcom. She chose "Diff'rent Strokes."
She struggled with substance misuse
"Diff'rent Strokes" became one of NBC's biggest hits, eventually running for eight seasons. But that success came at a cost. "She was always insecure," her former manager, Sy Levin, told People. "She was third on the totem pole. It was always [Gary] Coleman, then it was Todd [Bridges]. Then it was her."
She turned to drugs and alcohol. According to Levin, she was just 14 when she first overdosed on Valium. By 15, she began turning up drunk to set. "She would show up in a daze, in a funk," said series producer Al Burton, who cast Plato on the show. In fact, she was said to have been an early adopter when it came to drugs. In his book, "Killing Willis" (via Today) Bridges claimed that it was Plato who gave him his first taste of marijuana when he was just 14 and that she also initiated a sexual relationship with him.
As an adult, Plato's consumption of alcohol was disturbing. Her former drug counselor told People that at one point she was downing a gallon of vodka each day. "I was so wasted, it would take me a good five days to sober up and go to work," she once said during an E! interview (via People). The Los Angeles Times reported that during an interview with an unidentified outlet in 1992, Plato recalled the late '80s as having been a dark period of her life. "Three years of nonstop drinking," she said. "I didn't care for drugs much, I just wanted my alcohol."
If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357)
She was fired when she deliberately got pregnant
Dana Plato apparently had a rebellious streak, something that became apparent when she became pregnant in 1984, at the age of 18. Already on thin ice with producers over her alcohol misuse, Plato's pregnancy proved to be the last straw — she was fired and told that her personal life was at odds with the wholesome, family-friendly nature of "Diffr'ent Strokes." At the time, she was reportedly being paid more than $20,000 per episode.
Plato's TV dad wasn't happy about her pregnancy and believed it had been no accident. "She deliberately got pregnant while doing the series," Conrad Bain told People. "When I spoke to her about it, she was enthusiastic about having done that." According to Bain, at one point Plato told him, "When I get the baby, I will never be alone again."
Before the baby's arrival, Plato and her boyfriend Lanny Lambert, then 21, got married. She made a few occasional appearances on "Diff'rent Strokes" after her dismissal from the sitcom, but Kimberly Drummond was written off the show, with her character sent off to boarding school in upstate New York.
She struggled to find work after Diff'rent Strokes
Now the mother of a baby that she'd desperately wanted, Dana Plato expected to restart her acting career. That proved to be far more difficult than she'd imagined. After a guest spot on "The Love Boat" in 1984, and another on the sitcom "Growing Pains" in 1985, Plato was unable to find any acting work, and certainly nothing with the kind of salary she'd received on "Diff'rent Strokes."
As her struggles to find work increased, her expectations lowered. No longer welcome on network television, she took whatever job she could get. These ranged from straight-to-video B-movies like "Bikini Beach Race" to video game work, starring as the lead character in the 1992 Sega CD interactive horror movie, "Night Trap."
"I got blackballed because I got pregnant under contract," Plato said in a television interview with "Evening Magazine." At the time, Plato held a fairly realistic view of her situation, and how she was viewed in Hollywood. "... They're scared of me because they don't trust me, they don't know what I'm gonna do," she mused. However, she also felt betrayed by an industry that turned its back on her after she'd been steadily working since she was a child. "It just doesn't make too much sense to me, because I've never had a bad rep on set, I've always been on time, never not shown up," she said. "So I don't know why I got such a bad rep ... there are a lot of people who won't even see me."
Posing nude for Playboy led to X-rated movies
In 1989, Dana Plato decided to strip down for a nude photo spread in Playboy in the hopes that the media exposure generated would land her some acting roles. "It was very, very difficult because I had a problem with not wanting to step outside myself because I never really knew who I was in the first place," she told "Evening Magazine" of baring all for Playboy. Speaking with People, "Diff'rent Strokes" production consultant Al Burton recalled running into Plato at a party in 1990, where she joked about the various tabloid scandals surrounding her and her former co-stars. "She told me, 'I just posed nude for Playboy, Gary [Coleman] is suing his parents, Todd [Bridges] was arrested. That Drummond sure was a terrible father.'"
Playboy did not provide the career jumpstart she'd hoped for. Instead, posing nude placed her on the radar of the adult film industry, leading to a role in the soft-core erotic thriller "Compelling Evidence." She then starred in the even racier "Different Strokes," provocatively subtitled, "A story of Jack and Jill ... and Jill."
Scrambling for work in the lower echelons of Hollywood was a far cry from her glory days on network television, but Plato's problems were compounded even further when she hired a new accountant, who she claimed embezzled most of her money before fleeing to another state, per Biography.
She lost custody of her son after her marriage failed
While Dana Plato's Hollywood career deteriorated, so too did her marriage to musician Lanny Lambert and they wound up splitting up in 1988 before divorcing a year later. While she continued to battle substance misuse, the court awarded custody of their son, Tyler, to her ex-husband. Plato acknowledged she wasn't in the right frame of mind to be a good mother at that point, and had the presence of mind to realize that her drinking would only prove harmful to her son. "I was making him crazy, so I sent him away," she told USA Today of losing custody of her son to Lambert (via People).
For most of his childhood, Tyler Lambert lived with Joni Richardson, his paternal grandmother. Johnny Whitaker, best known for his own years as a child star in the 1960s sitcom "Family Affair," was Plato's manager. As he told ABC News, her love for her son was deep and unconditional, despite the physical distance between them. "Dana did absolutely adore her son," Whitaker said.
If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357)
Her desperation led to an arrest for a botched robbery
By 1991, Dana Plato's life had hit a low. By that point, she'd moved to Las Vegas, and because acting roles had dried up she'd reportedly taken a job at a dry cleaner to support herself. Desperate for cash, Plato made one of the most foolish decisions in her life when she donned the lackluster disguise of a hat and a pair of sunglasses and walked into a nearby video store. She pulled out a pellet gun and proceeded to commit armed robbery.
But Plato's skills as a criminal were dubious. In fact, while store clerk Heather Dailey forked over $160 to Plato from the cash register, she immediately recognized who had just held her up. "I've just been robbed by the girl who played Kimberly on 'Diff'rent Strokes,'" Dailey told the 911 operator after the robbery, as reported by Las Vegas' 3 News. Cops easily found Plato, and within 15 minutes she was under arrest and facing a potential five-year jail sentence. Strangely, her $13,000 bail was posted by none other than legendary Vegas icon Wayne Newton. During sentencing, she ultimately received no jail time, just a six-year suspended sentence, per the Washington Examiner.
After the robbery, Plato painted a pretty bleak picture of her current situation while speaking with "Hard Copy." "I'm unstable right now," Plato admitted. "I don't know where I'm going to be living next month. I don't know what I'm going to be doing, and I don't think that's fair."
Her addiction issues led to more legal woes
Dana Plato dodged a bullet when she avoided going to jail after her ill-conceived 1991 robbery attempt. But she was arrested for a second time the following year. This time, she'd been caught forging a prescription for Valium. Unlike her first arrest, she wound up doing time. According to the Washington Examiner, she spent 30 days behind bars for violating the terms of her probation.
As Deseret News reported, Plato's scheme was purportedly aided by pharmacist Charles Kotzan. He was fined $1,500 and received a one-year probationary sentence for allegedly supplying Plato with enough Valium to last a year within a period of three weeks.
Plato's brushes with the law may have become fodder for supermarket tabloids and late-night comedy monologues, but her arrests were not something that she took lightly. "It's a strange thing because when somebody takes your freedom away, it's almost like you've been raped," Plato told "Hard Copy." Additionally, being arrested also brought her an unexpected feeling she hadn't anticipated — she was finally being listened to. "I felt relief," she explained. "Because I felt like I was gonna get help for something I was suffering through that I didn't even understand." But as Plato herself put it, nobody should have to do something so drastic in order to get help.
If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357)
Listeners mocked her on The Howard Stern Show
In the years after her arrests, Dana Plato and her fellow "Diff'rent Strokes" co-stars had all experienced various public indignities, including Gary Coleman's public accusations that his parents had ripped him off and left him broke, and Todd Bridges' own experiences with addiction.
In 1999, Plato made an appearance on "The Howard Stern Show" – by all accounts, it didn't go well. While the former child star claimed to have been sober for a decade, Stern's listeners weren't buying it, calling in to share their opinions that she sounded like she was inebriated even as she declared her own sobriety. A clearly distressed Plato fired back by offering to take a drug test, leading show producer Gary "Bababooey" Dell'Abate to snip some of her hair to be submitted for drug testing.
However, what viewers hadn't known was that after the show had ended, she asked for the return of her hair. "She gave us the hair — then she said, 'No, I want it back.' And Gary wouldn't give it back and it was a whole big mess," Stern said in a subsequent edition of his show (via the New York Post). "We had a lot of deception going on, I think."
If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357)
She was ruled to have died by suicide
The day after making her appearance on "The Howard Stern Show," Dana Plato was found dead in Moore, Oklahoma, where she had been visiting the parents of her fiance, Robert Menchaca, in celebration of Mother's Day. She was discovered cold and unresponsive after ingesting a mixture of medication and retiring for a nap in the RV in which they'd driven there. Per the Washington Post, at the time a police spokesperson said, "The death appears to be an accidental overdose. We don't suspect suicide."
While police initially announced that Plato's death had been accidental, deputy medical examiner Dr. Larry E. Balding concluded that the specific circumstances of her death combined with her history suggested otherwise, per the Chicago Tribune. Plato's death was subsequently ruled to be a suicide. However, she didn't leave behind a note.
In the immediate aftermath of her death, some of those who knew Plato accused "The Howard Stern Show" of having pushed the vulnerable star to her limits. Todd Bridges told the New York Post, "I thought something was wrong ... I was hoping I was wrong ... You could see it on Dana's face that she was hurting and she needed a lot of help." However, Stern insisted to the outlet that he didn't think that was the case. "Maybe we gave her her last good time," he said. "She thanked me afterward. She was sweet, very nice."
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
Her son died on the anniversary of her death
Sadly, the tragic circumstances that plagued Dana Plato during her brief life didn't end upon her death. Shortly before Mother's Day 2010, 11 years after she died, Plato's son, Tyler Lambert, died by suicide just two days before what would have been the anniversary of his mother's death. He was 25.
"It's a shame that such a talented human being would do this with his life," Joni Richardson, the grandmother who had helped raised him, told People. "He had all the opportunities in the world and we just can't understand it." She added that they had just talked that morning. "But you never can tell what's in their mind," his grandmother said.
Throughout his life, Plato experienced issues with substance misuse, just as his mother had. "Mother's Day was always a difficult time, not only because it was Mother's Day but the anniversary of Dana's death," his mother's former manager, Johnny Whitaker, told ABC News.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).