Actor Gary Coleman, the “Different Strokes” child star who has been the latest in a long list of child actors who led troubled and often tragic lives as adults, is reportedly in critical condition after suffering a still-unexplained head injury. He is reportedly on life support with a brain hemorrhage.
Here’s the Today Show’s good summary of the latest, Coleman’s career, and his problems as an adult:
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Although details are slow in coming, the kinds of news stories and posts “out there” have the unmistakable flavor of a story where editors are ready and poised to use a long-prepared-and-stored obituary that will only require a timely top to be put above material written some time ago. There are even some rumors swirling around the Internet that he is already dead.
TMZ has learned Gary Coleman is currently hospitalized in Utah — and we’re told he’s in critical condition.
Sources tell us Coleman was admitted yesterday — after he was transported from his home in Utah around 12:50 PM.
Coleman’s brother-in-law tells TMZ Coleman suffered a head injury after a fall.
“I can confirm Mr. Coleman is a patient here at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center,” hospital spokeswoman Janet Frank tells PEOPLE. “He’s listed in critical condition. He was admitted Wednesday. We are not confirming what department he’s in or any further details.”
Coleman’s brother-in-law told TMZ.com that the actor suffered a head injury after a fall.
A rep and lawyer for the actor didn’t return calls for comment.
Gary Coleman desperately needs your “thoughts and prayers.”
The former Diff’rent Strokes star, hospitalized after a fall earlier this week, is now on life support with a brain hemorrhage, according to his manager.
Coleman, 42, suffered the injury in his Utah home on Wednesday and was taken to a local hospital for treatment, manager John Alcantar said in a statement Friday. Coleman was then transferred to the ICU at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center for further tests and treatment.
And there, things took a bad turn.
“As of mid-morning on May 27, Mr. Coleman was conscious and lucid,” said Alcantar. “By early afternoon, Mr. Coleman was slipping in and out of consciousness and his condition worsened.
“We are saddened to announce that since mid-afternoon, Mountain Time, on May 27, 2010, Mr. Coleman has been unconscious and on life support.”
The press has had a conflicted relationship with Coleman. When he was a precocious kid talking for all the world like a little adult in a kid’s body — which was what he was to become due to kidney disease — he was a favorite to cover and quote. As he grew older but did not grow and clearly could not find respectable roles in entertainment, he became something of a personal train-wreck story: a see-how-far-he’s fallen ongoing narrative. But, even so, some celebrity bloggers and journalists still seemed to have some affection for Gary Coleman, the human being.
He could recover from this latest critical illness. But no matter what, Coleman is the latest in a string of child stars whose best years and in many cases happiest times were behind them once they grew out of being cute.
Some wound up killed, some died in accidents, some of drug overdoses and others stayed in the entertainment field in reduced capacities — and some like Ron Howard duplicated their childhood success as adults. But Coleman’s story has a special poignancy due to his lifelong battle with kidney disease, the difference in how he was perceived as a cute, smart little kid versus as an undersized struggling adult, and his unhappy marriages and tempestuous adult life in general.
When we watch young stars on TV or the movies, we tend to forget the pain and disappointment they often suffer once the cameras are off and they’re no longer cute enough to be celebrated. But Coleman’s pain has been out there for all to see — and some of it has not been of his own making.
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.