Dana Plato

Dana Plato will always be known as Kimberly Drummond on the NBC sitcom Diff'rent Strokes, but had she chosen to compete for a spot on the U.S. Olympic Figure Skating team, she might still be alive today. Instead she chose TV and to deal with the pressure of instant fame, turned to drugs. She was released from her contract when she became pregnant and from there it was downhill. Marriage, divorce, adult films, a playboy shoot, being embezzeled by her accountant and a robbery ultimately led her to multiple suicide attempts. When she died of an overdose of painkillers in her RV, which was parked outside her fiancée's parents’ home in Oklahoma on May 8, 1999, the coroner ruled her death a suicide. She was 34 years old. Tragically, her son Tyler committed suicide 11 years later at age 25 with a self-inflicted gunshot to the head.