Friday, May 28, 2010

RIP Gary Coleman

Television icon, Gary Coleman, passed away this afternoon. He had tripped and hit his head, which at first seemed like nothing, progressed to unconsciousness, a brain hemorrhage, a coma, and then finally death. He was only 42.

Gary Coleman, an actor since an early age, was a television sensation as the precocious star of the sitcom "Diff'rent Strokes" in the late 1970s through to the 1980s.

Suffering from kidney problems throughout his life, and stunting his growth as well, he never let it affect his work, always portraying a happy child both on and off the screen. In the eighties he appeared in a variety of projects from made for TV movies to cartoons to lunchboxes. You could hardly go anywhere without hearing his catchphrase, "What'choo talkin' 'bout, Willis?"

Sadly as the sitcom lost popularity and was eventually canceled, things turned sour. Along with his co-stars, Todd Bridges and the late Dana Plato, he seemed to be a poster child for child actors unable to make the transition to adulthood. Financial problems, lawsuits and erratic behavior marked his life after celebrity. However you remember Gary Coleman, as TV's Arnold Jackson, or as gossip page fodder, he will be missed.

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