It's sometimes difficult to transition from being a child star to a serious actor; some young actors try to remain on screen, while others choose different directions after one big hit. Here are a few iconic child stars who are no longer with us.
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00:00It's sometimes difficult to transition from being a child star to a serious actor. Some
00:05young actors try to remain on screen, while others choose different directions after one
00:09big hit. Here are a few iconic child stars who are no longer with us.
00:13Five-year-old Heather O'Rourke was eating in the cafeteria at MGM Studios one day in
00:17the early 1980s, waiting while her sister Tammy was filming a movie. It was there that
00:21she was scouted by blockbuster filmmaker Steven Spielberg, who was producing the 1982 horror
00:26movie Poltergeist. He thought that O'Rourke, who at the time had a resume consisting of
00:30a single episode of Fantasy Island, would be right for the part of Carol Ann Freeling,
00:34a girl who would be kidnapped by evil forces through a closet. Poltergeist would prove
00:38to be a hit, and O'Rourke would go on to appear in a few episodes of TV shows like Webster
00:42and Happy Days, but most notably reprised the role of Carol Ann in two Poltergeist sequels.
00:47In February 1988, O'Rourke reported abdominal pain so severe that her parents quickly took
00:52her to Children's Hospital of San Diego. The 12-year-old actor died during surgery
00:57from what doctors diagnosed as complications of intestinal stenosis, a serious obstruction
01:01of the small intestine that O'Rourke had dealt with since birth, but had gone undiagnosed.
01:06The family's attorney filed a lawsuit alleging medical malpractice.
01:09What they thought she had was bowel inflammation. What she actually had was an obstruction.
01:17That blockage allowed an infection to develop, which had stopped the actor's heart. Poltergeist
01:213 arrived in theaters in June 1988, four months after O'Rourke died.
01:27As the daughter of film producer and novelist Dominic Dunn and the brother of filmmaker
01:31and An American Werewolf in London star Griffin Dunn, Dominique Dunn was properly set up for
01:36movie success. Between 1979 and 1981, she slowly broke into Hollywood with a succession
01:41of roles in the TV movies The Day the Loving Stopped and Valentine Magic on Love Island.
01:46She also landed episodic work on shows like Lou Grant and Family. Dunn found her breakthrough
01:50role in the 1982 horror movie Poltergeist, portraying teenager Dana Freeling, part of
01:55a family whose home was beset by evil spirits. She filmed and taped several more episodes
01:59of TV shows like Chips, Hill Street Blues, and V, most of which would air after her death.
02:05In 1982, Dunn broke up with her boyfriend, John Sweeney, rejecting his possessive and
02:09violent behavior after he'd attempted to strangle her once before. When Dunn tried to break
02:13things off for good, it sent Sweeney into a rage. He lured her out of her home and strangled
02:18her again. After days in the hospital, Dunn never regained consciousness. He was later
02:22convicted of voluntary manslaughter and served just a few years in prison. Dunn was 22 years
02:27old when she died.
02:29Before MTV's TRL disappeared, it popularized boy bands, making huge stars out of the Backstreet
02:34Boys and NSYNC. But just as MTV got into the boy band business, they were also mocking
02:39the fad. In 2000, it aired the TV movie Together, about a manufactured five-guy group of the
02:44same name. It spawned a TV series, a book, and albums. Together even hit the road as
02:49Britney Spears' opening act. Like other boy bands, Together included an adorable baby-faced
02:54member, Jason QT McKnight, portrayed by actor and singer Michael Cuccioni. He'd appeared
03:00in single episodes of just two other series before he began playing QT full-time in 2000.
03:05In childhood, Cuccioni was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, a form of cancer. By the
03:09age of 10, doctors pronounced him to be cancer-free. His illness was even something they'd
03:14written into the show as a joke.
03:16It's also not true that I'm still dying. Seriously? Just kidding. I am.
03:22But in late 2000, 15-year-old Cuccioni and his mother were involved in a car accident,
03:26which led to the singer checking into British Columbia Children's Hospital for surgery to
03:30repair a damaged diaphragm. While under medical supervision, he developed pneumonia. His lungs
03:35had grown so irreparably damaged from the chemotherapy treatments he endured that he
03:39able to breathe without a machine. In January 2001, eight days after his 16th birthday and
03:44while the Together series was still running, Cuccioni died after respiratory failure.
03:50When Oscar-nominated filmmaker Richard Linklater wanted to remake the 70s comedy The Bad News
03:54Bears in 2005, he had to find an actor for the role of star youth baseball pitcher Amanda
03:59Wurlitzer, hopefully someone who was as good at baseball as she was at reading lines. Linklater
04:04found his candidate in Sammy Cain Craft, who hurled a 75-mile-an-hour fastball at
04:08her audition. Craft was 13 years old when The Bad News Bears was released, marking both
04:13her professional acting debut and also her final film. Craft later attended high school
04:18in Woodland Hills, California, played softball, and formed a band, Scary Girls.
04:22In the early morning hours of October 9, 2012, Craft was riding in an Audi going over the
04:28speed limit on a freeway in Los Angeles. The driver hit a semi-truck from behind, and their
04:32Audi was then also hit by another vehicle. Craft was rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center,
04:37where she was pronounced dead. Craft was 20 years old. The driver was later arrested on
04:42a charge of felony drunk driving.
04:45After a career on stage that had begun at the age of six, Tommy Reddick moved on to
04:49movies in 1950, co-starring in more than a dozen, including The Five Thousand Fingers
04:53of Dr. T and River of No Return. But none of those films had the cultural reach of one
04:58of the most famous fictional dogs in history. Reddick edged out more than 500 kid actors
05:03to win the role of Jeff Miller in 1954's Lassie TV series. Reddick stayed with Lassie
05:08for three years, until the plot shifted. The Millers took in an orphan named Timmy, but
05:12left the family farm, leaving both Lassie and Timmy behind to live with the Martins,
05:16Timmy's new adoptive parents.
05:18Reddick showed up occasionally on TV shows in the 1960s, but disappeared until his final
05:23role, returning to the character of Jeff Miller in the final episode of The New Lassie in
05:271992, in an episode he co-wrote.
05:29I had a Lassie of my own once. She was very special.
05:34Throughout his life, he found work as a photographer, computer programmer, and gym manager, while
05:38publicly advocating for the legalization of marijuana. On February 15, 1996, Reddick's
05:44body was discovered at his home in Marina del Rey, California. An initial autopsy attributed
05:48the death of the former actor to natural causes. Reddick was 54 years old.
05:54Dustin Diamond was 11 years old when he first portrayed smart, socially awkward misfit Samuel
05:58Screech Powers in 1988 on the Disney Channel series Good Morning, Miss Bliss. When that
06:03series was adapted into the NBC Saturday morning teen sitcom Saved by the Bell, Diamond went
06:08along. He reprised the role for 86 episodes, plus two made-for-TV movies, a short-lived
06:13spinoff Saved by the Bell, The College Years, and then for another 130 episodes of Saved
06:18by the Bell, The New Class.
06:20Diamond was so adept at playing the quintessential TV nerd that he had a hard time getting the
06:23chance to play anything else. While Diamond landed the occasional role in a B-movie or
06:28a primetime sitcom, he was often stuck playing a fictionalized version of himself or appearing
06:32on reality TV. He also faced a number of controversies over the years, including a few reality TV
06:37fights and the production of an adult video.
06:40Don't freak out, you're in hell.
06:42What?
06:43Yeah.
06:44Why?
06:45For a lot of reasons that I think that you know.
06:46Diamond checked into a Florida hospital in January 2021, noting unexplained and serious
06:50full body pain. A number of exams and tests later confirmed that Diamond had stage 4 small
06:55cell carcinoma. On February 1, 2021, only three weeks after receiving his diagnosis
07:01and despite receiving chemotherapy, Diamond died at the age of 44.
07:06An instant hit upon its debut in 1986, the sitcom ALF launched a pop culture phenomenon.
07:12Based around a hip, wisecracking alien puppet, the title character hid out in a suburban
07:16home of the Tanner family, annoying all of his human hosts except for young Brian Tanner,
07:21portrayed by child star Benji Gregory.
07:23Before ALF, Gregory landed some supporting roles in live-action TV. After ALF ended in
07:271990, he contributed his voice to the animated Back to the Future TV series and Once Upon
07:32a Forest. In adulthood, he abandoned acting and enlisted in the U.S. Navy, where he worked
07:37as a weather forecaster on an aircraft carrier.
07:40According to Gregory's sister, the former actor's body was discovered in his car on
07:43June 13, 2024, next to that of his service dog, outside of a bank in Peoria, Arizona.
07:49Reporting on Facebook, she recounted,
07:51"...we believe he went there the evening of the 12th to deposit some residuals and never
07:55got out of the car to do so. He fell asleep and died from vehicular heat stroke."
07:59Gregory was 46 years old.
08:02With a $102 million box office haul, Mary Poppins was far and away the top-grossing
08:07movie of 1964. The Disney adaptation of the classic children's novel about a magical nanny
08:12won Julie Andrews an Academy Award and shot its child stars to fame, including 8-year-old
08:17Matthew Garber.
08:19Before playing Michael Banks, Garber had appeared in only one other project, the forgettable
08:221963 magical cat movie The Three Lives of Thomasina. After Mary Poppins raised his stature,
08:28Garber made just one more film, the 1967 family comedy The Gnome Mobile.
08:33In the 1970s, Garber embraced a hippie lifestyle and headed to India, where a number of enclaves
08:38established by like-minded Americans and Europeans had developed. While traveling around India
08:43in 1976, Garber acquired hepatitis. According to the actor's brother, it was unknown how
08:49that happened, but it was most likely from consuming tainted meat. By the time Garber's
08:52family persuaded him to return home to England for medical treatment in 1977, it was too
08:57late. The disease had taken hold and irreparably damaged his pancreas. In June 1977, Garber
09:04died of hemorrhagic necrotizing pancreatitis at the Royal Free Hospital in London. He was
09:0921.
09:11John Paul Stoyer showed up on a handful of TV series in the late 1980s and early 1990s,
09:16including Day by Day, Star Trek The Next Generation, and The Wonder Years. When ABC
09:20built a sitcom around popular stand-up comic Brett Butler in 1993, 9-year-old Stoyer was
09:25cast as Butler's character's gentle young son, Quentin Kelly. The show, Grace Under
09:30Fire, was a top-ten hit and earned Stoyer a nomination at the Young Artist Awards in
09:341995. But in 1996, after three seasons, he left the series.
09:39Butler's onset behavior had grown unacceptable, including an alleged incident in which she
09:43exposed herself in front of Stoyer. The role of Quentin was aged up and recast with replacement
09:48actor Sam Horrigan. Stoyer permanently quit acting. He later switched to music and adopted
09:53the stage name Johnny P. Jewels while performing with various bands. He also launched a popular
09:58restaurant in Portland. On January 1, 2018, according to an investigation by Portland
10:03police, Stoyer died by suicide. The former child star was 33 years old.
10:09The three kids on CBS' smash hit Everybody Loves Raymond were played by the same three
10:13young actors for the entirety of its nearly decade-long run — real-life siblings Madeline,
10:18Sullivan, and Sawyer Sweetin. They all took home $100,000 per episode paychecks by the
10:23end of the series. But Sawyer Sweetin in particular faced financial problems a decade later. He
10:28never appeared on screen again after Everybody Loves Raymond, and was deeply in debt by 2015.
10:33After a business he formed didn't take off, he didn't have income when California issued
10:37a lien to recover unpaid taxes. Desperate and depressed, Sweetin died by suicide on
10:42April 23, 2015, at the home of a relative in Austin, Texas — the place the actor was
10:47born and raised. Madeline Sweetin said in a statement to Variety,
10:51"'This morning a terrible family tragedy has occurred. We are devastated to report
10:55that our beloved brother, son, and friend, Sawyer Sweetin, took his own life. He was
11:00weeks away from his 20th birthday.'"