LOS ANGELES — Adam Rich, who played the role of “America’s younger brother” on the television show Eight Is Enough when he was a child actor and had a pageboy mop-top, has passed away. He was 54.
According to Lieutenant Aimee Earl of the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner Coroner’s office, Rich passed away on Saturday at his residence located in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. The circumstances surrounding the death were being looked into, but there was no reason to suspect foul play.
When he was only eight years old, Rich landed the role of Nicholas Bradford, the youngest of eight children, on the hit ABC drama that aired from 1977 until 1981. Rich’s acting career was brief after that.
After repeated run-ins with the law due to his substance abuse and alcoholism, he checked himself into the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage to receive treatment.
According to Rich’s publicist, Danny Deraney, Rich suffered from a form of depression that was resistant to therapy, and he worked hard to reduce the social stigma associated with discussing mental illness. Over the years, he put his faith in unproven treatments, but to no avail.
According to Deraney, he and a few other people who are close to Rich became concerned when they couldn’t reach him during the past few weeks.
On August 20, 1991, former child actor Adam Rich from the show Eight Is Enough appeared in a courtroom in Van Nuys, California.
According to Deraney, who spoke with the Associated Press, “He was simply a very nice, generous, and loving soul.” “He did not always have the goal of becoming a well-known actor in his sights. He didn’t have an ounce of ego in him at all.”
On Twitter, Rich talked about his mental health and revealed in October that he had been clean from drugs and alcohol for seven years. He admitted that he had made mistakes, such as getting arrested, spending a lot of time in rehabilitation, experiencing multiple overdoses, and going through “countless detoxes (and) relapses,” and he urged his nearly 19,000 followers to keep fighting against their addictions.
In September, Rich wrote on Twitter that “human beings were not built to tolerate mental illness.” “It’s amusing that some people actually believe those folks to be weak or to lack willpower because the reality is that it’s the complete opposite of both of those things! Fighting off sicknesses of this nature requires a person to be extraordinarily resilient, or, if you prefer, a warrior.”
Rich shared a throwback photo of himself on his Instagram account, in which he can be seen alongside former child actor Mickey Rooney.
“Everyone used to tell me, ‘You are the contemporary day Mickey Rooney,'” he tweeted. “Everyone used to say that to me.” “However, when Mickey Rooney himself told me that, it meant a whole lot more to me!”
Rich took part in a hoax that was perpetrated by Might magazine and published over 27 years ago. The fake stated that the actor had been murdered during a heist that took place outside of a Los Angeles nightclub in 1996. The article in the obscure magazine was supposed to be a satire of the celebrity mania that exists in the United States, but when the joke was exposed, the satire fell flat.
“I think that we may have been a little bit too secretive about what we were doing. The audience members were not able to appreciate the humor,” After then, Rich provided an explanation to the Chicago Tribune regarding it. “I have no interest in traveling to the afterlife.”
Rich, the spiky-haired son of a newspaper columnist played by Dick Van Patten, was the little brother to a generation of TV viewers as the mop-top son of a man who had to raise eight children by himself after his wife in the show, as well as the actress who played her during the first season of filming, passed away. Dick Van Patten was the little brother.
According to information found on IMDB.com, Rich starred in the television series Code Red from 1981 to 1982 and provided the voice for the role of Presto the Magician on Dungeons & Dragons from 1983 to 1985. He appeared in both of the Eight Is Enough TV movie reunions, playing the part that made him famous.
However, the majority of his acting career consisted of guest-starring roles in individual episodes of some of the most successful and widely watched television series of the period, including The Love Boat, The Six Million Dollar Man, Silver Spoons, and Baywatch. According to IMDB, his most recent role was as Crocodile Dundee on the television show Reel Comedy, which aired in 2003.
