LOS ANGELES – Adam Rich, the pageboy child actor who enchanted television audiences as “America’s Little Brother” on “Eight is Enough,” has died. He was 54.
Rich died Saturday at his home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, Lt. Aimee Earl of the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office. The cause of death was under investigation but was ruled non-suspicious.
Rich had a limited acting career, having starred at age 8 as Nicholas Bradford, the youngest of eight children, on the ABC hit dramedy that ran from 1977-1981.
said Betty Buckley, who played his stepmother on the show on Instagram this She was shocked to learn of his death Sunday, referring to Rich as “the light,” her “young pal” on set and friend ever since.
“I adored him and loved working with him,” said Buckley, who posted photos from the show of the two together on a swing, on horseback and with her arm around him while he slept. “He was so sweet, funny, fresh and natural. He brought a lot of joy to all of us on the show and to our audience.”
Rich’s public life after fame was similar to that of other child actors whose promising careers are later dashed by drugs, alcohol and the law.
He was arrested in 2002 for driving under the influence after almost hitting a parked California Highway Patrol cruiser in a lane closed for maintenance. He was arrested in April 1991 for attempting to break into a pharmacy and in October of that year for allegedly stealing a syringe filled with medication at a hospital where he was being treated for a dislocated shoulder.
Rich suffered from a type of depression that resisted treatment, and he’s been trying to remove the stigma of speaking out about mental illness, publicist Danny Deraney said. Over the years he tried unsuccessfully experimental cures.
Deraney said he and others close to Rich had been concerned in recent weeks when they were unable to reach him.
“He was just a very kind, generous, loving soul,” Deraney told The Associated Press. “Being a famous actor isn’t necessarily what he wanted to be. … He had no ego, not an ounce of it.”
Rich opened up about his mental health on Twitter, noting in October that he had been sober for seven years. He said he’s not perfect – citing arrests, many stints in rehab, multiple overdoses and “countless detoxes (and) relapses” – and urged his nearly 19,000 followers to never give up.
“Human beings are not made to endure mental illness,” Rich tweeted in September. “The mere fact that some people consider them weak or lacking in willpower is utterly ridiculous…because it’s the complete opposite! It takes a very, very strong person… a warrior, if you will… to fight such diseases.”
Rich posted a picture of himself in his prime with former child star Mickey Rooney.
“Everybody used to say to me, ‘You’re the modern day Mickey Rooney,'” he tweeted. “But when Mickey Rooney told me that himself, it meant a hell of a lot more to me!”
Nearly 27 years ago, Rich took part in a hoax created by Might magazine about the actor’s death in a 1996 robbery outside a Los Angeles nightclub. The article for the little-known magazine was intended as a satire on America’s celebrity obsession, but fizzled out when it managed to expose the fake.
“I think we were a little too subtle. People didn’t get the joke,” Rich later told the Chicago Tribune. “I don’t want to be dead.”
Rich was the little brother of a generation of TV viewers as the mop-up son of a newspaper columnist, played by Dick Van Patten, who is left to raise eight children alone after his wife on the show — and the actress who played her — died while filming the first season .
According to IMDB.com, Rich starred in the series Code Red from 1981-1982 and voiced the character of Presto the Magician in Dungeons & Dragons from 1983-1985. He reprized his best-known role in two “Eight is Enough” TV movie reunions.
But the balance of his acting career was single-episode appearances on some of the most popular television shows of the time: The Love Boat, The Six Million Dollar Man, Silver Spoons, and Baywatch. His last IMDB-listed role was Crocodile Dundee in 2003’s Reel Comedy.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, transcribed or redistributed without permission.
