The Curse of the Child Star

When Corey Haim died of a suspected overdose yesterday, he joined a long line of child stars with tragic adult lives. Eighties TV seems especially cursed: Andrew Koenig from Growing Pains killed himself last month, Diff'rent Strokes' Dana Plato robbed a video store at gunpoint and later ODed on Vicodin, and many of the decade's former stars who remain alive are racking up arrest records and rehab stints.

Jodi Sweetin, Stephanie from Full House, went on meth benders even while on the book tour for her memoir about finally being sober. Corey Feldman was arrested twice for heroin possession, Koenig's Growing Pains co-star Tracey Gold severely injured her child by crashing her SUV while driving drunk, and Eight Is Enough's Adam Rich broke into a pharmacy to steal drugs. But the problem didn't start in the eighties, Andrew Brown notes in the Telegraph: 1940s child star Bobbie Driscoll died of a likely heroin overdose in a Lower East Side tenement at age 31.

(More Corey Haim stories.)