Diff’rent Strokes star Gary Colman led a troubled and tragic life and a new documentary reveals that for years he wished he had “gotten out” of acting before he ever became famous and dreamed of living a “normal life” and having friends.
Coleman, who died in 2010 at only 42 years of age after a fall left him with an intracranial hemorrhage, spent years having difficulties maintaining his acting career after the 1986 cancellation of the show that made him famous.
The Peacock documentary Gary reveals a 1993 interview in which a then 25-year-old Coleman who says he wished he never became an actor.
“If someone had told me my life would be like this, early enough where I could have gotten out, I would have gotten out. I would have had a normal life, and have friends,” he said, according to Entertainment Weekly.
He added that never becoming an actor in the first place was “something that I fantasize about. Because now here we are in 1993, I’m 25 years old, I’m a world-renowned celebrity. There’s no place I can go where someone doesn’t know me. I handle it because I’m a public figure, I’m supposed to be gracious, and have fun doing what I do. I love the work. I truly love making people laugh. But of course, there are aspects of the business that I don’t really care for.”
Coleman, who became world famous in 1978 as the precocious character “Arnold Jackson” when he was but ten years old, was earning $100,000 per episode — making him the highest paid child actor of his day. And everywhere the young actor went people wanted to hear him deliver his ubiquitous catch phrase, “Whatchu taklin’ about, Willis.”
But the fame, the money, and that catch phrase all became the bane of Colman’s existence as he was hounded everywhere he went because of the fame, was robbed of the money by unscrupulous family members and criminal managers, and could never get beyond the catch phrase for the rest of his acting career.
As the actor’s former girlfriend said in the documentary, “People didn’t want Gary, they wanted Arnold Jackson.”
Coleman despised the catch phrase, but nearly every acting job he won after Diff’rent Strokes went off the air forced him to say the line at some point during the gig.
The actor started life with the deck stacked against him being born with a kidney disease that left him with stunted growth. He never grew taller than four foot eight and struggled with the disease his whole life. But he also had bouts of depression and substance abuse.
In 1989 he sued his parents and managers for stealing away his roughly $18 million fortune, and, while he won the lawsuit, he had to file for bankruptcy in 1999.
Coleman did try to leave the world of acting and became a security guard in 1997, but that dream came to an end, too, when in 1998 he assaulted a fan who kept pursuing him for an autograph even though he said no. He was handed a 90-day suspended sentence and fined $400 for that incident.
“He constantly referred to himself as God’s punching bag,” Colman friend Dion Mial said of the actor. “He felt like one of life’s jokes. And he was never meant to be a person of good fortune.”
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