The Diff'rent Strokes Stars And Their Devastating Downfalls

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This article contains references to addiction, domestic violence, and suicide.

Running for eight seasons and 189 episodes, NBC's "Diff'rent Strokes" was one of the most popular sitcoms of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The story of a rich white widower who takes the two Black sons of a late employee under his wing, the cross-generational, cross-cultural show became renowned for tackling subjects other comedies wouldn't dare, spawned one of TV's most iconic catchphrases ("What you talkin' 'bout Willis?"), and turned its younger cast members into household names.

Unfortunately, Gary Coleman, Todd Bridges, and Dana Plato, who played brothers Arnold and Willis Jackson and their adopted sister Kimberly Drummond, respectively, all discovered that fame at such a young age comes at a cost. Here's a look at the trio's downfalls.

Gary Coleman racked up dozens of other TV and film credits after his stint as Arnold Jackson in "Diff'rent Strokes" came to an end in 1986. But he was largely restricted to bit parts, guest spots, and, much to his annoyance, reprisals of his most famous character.

Coleman, who despised his catchphrase, "What you talkin' 'bout Willis?" ended up assuming the role that launched him to fame once again in "Amazing Stories" and "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." Arnold Jackson kept getting referenced in everything from "Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star" to "Sherman Oaks." Much to his dismay (he tried in vain to file a lawsuit against its producers), Coleman and his character were also parodied in the hit musical "Avenue Q," most notably with the song "It Sucks to Be Me."

"Celebrity is always a burden," Coleman stated in an interview shown in his posthumous documentary "Gary" (via Yahoo! News). "I don't care who you are, I don't care how much you claim you like it. You are stuck with it for life. You're going to die a celebrity even if you haven't worked in 20 years."

Gary Coleman amassed a multimillion-dollar fortune during his eight-year stint playing Arnold Jackson in "Diff'rent Strokes." Indeed, at one point, he was pocketing $100,000 per episode. But by the turn of the century, the actor was forced to file for bankruptcy. So what happened to all the hard-earned cash?

Well, remarkably, the two people who should have had Coleman's best interests at heart were largely responsible. His father, W.G., a former forklift operator, and his mother, Edmonia Sue, a one-time nurse practitioner, were said to have squandered the majority of his earnings. He subsequently took court action on several occasions, suing them in 1989 after it was discovered they'd plowed nearly $800,000 of their son's money into investments without his consent. In 1993, a judge ruled in his favor following attempts by his parents to place him into a conservatorship, ordering them to pay back $1.28 million.

Unfortunately, Coleman continued to make poor financial decisions himself over the following decades. He invested in a California games arcade, which failed to take off, for example. And after going bankrupt in 1999, he tried to recoup some money with a web auction selling off some of his most prized possessions. Unfortunately, the stunt would only bring in approximately $5,000.

As well as having to contend with a multitude of health and financial problems, Gary Coleman also repeatedly found himself in trouble with the law during his later years. In fact, the man who was once renowned as America's favorite cherubic child star nearly found himself behind bars.

In 1998, Coleman was given a suspended jail sentence after pleading no contest to assault following an altercation with an apparently overzealous fan. The "Diff'rent Strokes" star punched bus driver Tracy Fields at a California mall when, after approaching him for an autograph, she started to make fun of his dwindling career. "I was getting scared, and she was getting ugly," he said (via The Guardian) during the court case in which he was also ordered to attend anger management classes and pay Fields' medical bills.

This wouldn't be the last time that Coleman got on the wrong side of the law. In 2008, he was fined $100 for reckless driving and disorderly conduct after a fracas that kicked off in a Utah bowling alley. The star had reportedly vented his frustrations at being snapped without his consent by striking the photographer in question with his truck, causing some minor injuries in the process, as well as colliding with another vehicle. But the majority of his brushes with the cops came as a result of his tempestuous marriage.

While shooting sports comedy "Church Ball" in 2005, Gary Coleman fell in love with one of the film's extras, Shannon Price, with the pair going on to tie the knot in a ceremony on a Nevada mountaintop two years later. But even by this point, the pair's relationship had started to turn dangerously volatile.

Just a month before getting wed, Coleman was arrested for disorderly conduct following the first of many altercations that put the couple in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Two years later, they once again caught the attention of the police after another fracas at their home. And then in 2010, the "Diff'rent Strokes" star spent a night in jail and was ordered to attend anti-domestic violence classes due to another arrest for a similar offense.

Coleman and Price were actually already divorced by this point, but had decided to continue residing in the same Utah property. This, despite the fact that the former had been given a restraining order against the latter the previous year. In a candid interview, Coleman appeared to acknowledge that their financial situation was the root cause of their problems, remarking (via The Independent), "All she wants is money, but there wasn't any."

Gary Coleman's life concluded in 2010 when he died at the age of just 42 following a fall at his Utah home. Despite a police investigation ruling that his untimely passing was simply an accident, several of his nearest and dearest believe foul play may have been involved.

Coleman's ex-wife Shannon Price, who he'd still been living with at the time, first aroused suspicion with the 911 call she made after finding the star's body in their kitchen. Instead of following emergency services instructions, she appeared more concerned with getting his blood on herself than saving her former partner's life. Two days later, she made the decision to take off Coleman's life support when he'd previously stated that in such a worst-case scenario, he wanted to stay on it for at least two weeks.

And the plot thickened further when Price appeared on "Lie Detector: Truth or Deception." Although she was adamant she was entirely innocent of any wrongdoing when questioned about Coleman's fall, the lie detector test said otherwise. George Olivo, former FBI agent, told the show (via People) he was sure of there being "more to this story that hasn't been told." Here's a look at other "Diff'rent Strokes" stars you might not know have died.

Like his on-screen younger brother, Gary Coleman, Todd Bridges also struggled to cope with life after "Diff'rent Strokes." In fact, the actor, who played Willis, the more streetwise half of the Jackson siblings, spent time behind bars in 1989 after being charged with attempted murder.

Bridges had been accused of repeatedly firing a gun at Kenneth "Tex" Clay, a known drug dealer from the Texas area, in a cocaine den in Central Los Angeles. According to reports, the drama began when the star and an acquaintance broke into the property following a previous altercation with the victim. Bridges claimed that he couldn't remember shooting Clay, but that he had feared for his own life during the moment in question. "We kicked the door in," he recalled in court (via UPI). "Tex jumped out. I thought I saw a silver-plated gun in his hand. I thought he was gonna kill me ... It happened so fast. There was a flash and bam, I was out."

Although jurors acquitted Bridges of the more serious charge, they found themselves deadlocked on another count of assault with a firearm, subsequently leading to a retrial. On this occasion, the troubled celebrity was fully cleared. "This trial shows that justice is alive and well in Los Angeles," remarked his attorney, Johnnie Cochran (via the Los Angeles Times). But this wasn't the end of the sitcom favorite's legal problems.

In 1992, Todd Bridges once again got on the wrong side of the law when he was arrested in Burbank for various offenses, including possession of a loaded firearm and the transportation of narcotics. But instead of being sent to prison, the actor was ordered to attend rehab, a development which may well have saved his life.

Bridges had spent years abusing various substances, including cocaine and methamphetamines, following the cancellation of "Diff'rent Strokes." And he also became a pretty fearsome character in his Central Los Angeles neighborhood. "I had a .45-caliber MAC-10 I used to carry on me," he recalled in his memoir "Killing Willis: From Diff'rent Strokes to the Mean Streets to the Life I Always Wanted" (via Oprah.com): "I had a 9 mm, and if I showed you it and it came out of my waistband, you were shot. It was a matter of survival of the fittest."

Bridges also acknowledged how, during this turbulent period, he found himself estranged from his nearest and dearest, once spent 14 days awake bingeing on his drugs of choice, and even became something of a pimp. " I'm not happy saying that I was, but I was," he wrote about the latter. "That's the reality of it. I can't hide behind what I've done wrong, but I can say that everything I did was in the depth of me being loaded." Here are some other child star controversies that completely shook the TV industry.

Todd Bridges' court-ordered stint in rehab proved to be the wake-up call he desperately needed. Although the star admitted to finding the whole experience demoralizing, he ultimately realized he couldn't keep depending on the substances he'd abused throughout the '80s and early '90s. And he's maintained his sobriety ever since.

"I got tired of doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, and getting the same results," Bridges told podcast "Allison Interviews" (via People) about his epiphany. "I remember when I was in the rehab program, and this light came over me and God said, 'I'm going to put people in your path and you just listen to what they tell you, do what they tell you to do and don't question it, and you will be sober for a long time.'"

Bridges also managed to get his career back on track, landing recurring roles on "The Young and the Restless" and "Everybody Hates Chris," serving as a regular commentator on "World's Dumbest" and competing in "Hulk Hogan's Celebrity Championship Wrestling." He's also a proud father of two, as he discussed in his memoir: "I tell them I love them. I hug them. When my son wakes in the morning, he doesn't have to worry about whether his dad's in a bad mood. I give him a hug and talk with him, because I don't want him to be missing what I was missing."

Dana Plato became one of America's most-loved girls next door during her six-year stint as Kimberly Drummond in "Diff'rent Strokes." However, off-screen, she was anything but wholesome, effectively joining the list of former child stars who went off the deep end. The star began abusing drugs in her early teens and was written out of the sitcom after falling pregnant while still in her late teens, later turning to a life of crime.

In 1991, for example, Plato was sentenced to five years of probation after being convicted of robbing a video rental store in Las Vegas with the use of a pellet gun. Bizarrely, she'd returned to the scene just 15 minutes after the incident in which she pocketed a measly $164. She was given a similar punishment the following year after she was discovered to have forged prescriptions for Valium. And after violating its terms, the star was sent to prison for 30 days.

Plato's turbulent and tragic life was also plagued by relationship problems. She got engaged to director Fred Potts but never made it down the aisle, had her second marriage to fellow actor Scotty Gelt annulled, and began dating her younger manager, Robert Menchaca. She also lost custody of her son, Tyler (who took his own life in 2010) after splitting from her first husband, Lanny Lambert, and, to make matters worse, was herself robbed out of a vast sum of money by her accountant.

In May 1999, Dana Plato made a surprise appearance on "The Howard Stern Show," where she claimed that she'd been sober for more than ten years. But just a day later, the actor was found dead in her Winnebago home after a drug overdose.

According to her manager and fiancé Robert Menchaca, the "Diff'rent Strokes" star had complained that she was feeling ill during a visit to his parents' Oklahoma home and, having taken Valium and a dangerously strong pain medication named Lortab, took a nap. After later joining her in bed, he woke up to find her lifeless body, and despite his nurse technician mother's best efforts to save her, she was pronounced dead.

It was initially determined that Plato, who was only 34 years old, had died accidentally. "There was no note left, no outward sign she wanted to kill herself," Scott Singer, a police sergeant, told the press (via People). However, Larry Balding, the state's deputy medical examiner, later ruled that due to the concentrations of the substances and the actor's history of abuse, this was likely a case of suicide.

If you or anyone you know needs help with substance abuse, domestic abuse, or suicidal thoughts, contact the relevant resources below:

• The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

• The National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

• Call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org.