'Diff'rent Strokes': Todd Bridges is now the last living member of the core cast

Jayme Deerwester | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Remembering Charlotte Rae, our 80's TV housemother Charlotte Rae's comedic career spanned six decades with appearances on multiple shows. Here are the facts of her life.

With the death of actress Charlotte Rae on Sunday, Todd Bridges is now the last surviving original member of the "Diff'rent Strokes" cast.

if you don't remember her role on the groundbreaking NBC sitcom, Rae played Edna Garrett, the housekeeper for the Drummond family, who adopted the sons of his African-American maid after her death. Midway through the second season of "Diff'rent Strokes," Mrs. Garrett got a new job as a housemother at Eastland School for Girls, the boarding school attended by Kimberly Drummond (Dana Plato) and her character was spun off into "The Facts of Life."

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Here's a look back at the each of the cast members:

Todd Bridges, 51

Though all three of the child actors from "Diff'rent Strokes" had problems after the show ended in 1986, Bridges' appeared to be the most serious at the time. Within three years, he was using and selling crack cocaine and methamphetamine, partly to numb himself from the memory of being molested by his former publicist.

In 1989, the 24-year-old Bridges was accused of shooting a drug dealer eight times, leading to two trials, the first for attempted murder and the second for assault with a firearm. By August 1990, he was acquitted of both crimes, thanks to attorney Johnnie Cohran, who would become famous for his work defending O.J. Simpson.

Bridges wasn't out of the woods yet.

In his 2010 memoir "Killing Willis," Bridges wrote that when he was pulled over on his way from buying drugs in December 1992, he considered committing suicide by cop.

"I was worn out. It’d been a long time coming. I’d been using and dealing on and off for six years, and even though I’d been trying to get my act cleaned up, it clearly wasn’t working," he wrote. "I decided to give the cops what I knew they wanted, the chance to say they’d taken down Todd Bridges, the former child star turned drug dealer, whether they got me with bullets or with bars."

He was arrested again, but this time, a judge who happened to be a former addict himself, sent him to prison for 90 days – in hopes that stay would prompt him to make the decision to get clean once and for all.

Bridges has now been sober for more than 25 years.

In 2016, during an appearance on "The Dr. Oz Show," Bridges said he is no longer afraid to discuss his past and explained that he was no longer the man who once considered suicide by cop: "I love life now. Life is the best thing in the world."

Conrad Bain (1923-2013)

After "Diff'rent Strokes" was canceled, Bain, who played Park Avenue patriarch Philip Drummond appeared in the film "Postcards From the Edge" (1990). In 1996, he made his final TV appearance, reprising the Drummond role in another iconic black sitcom, "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air."

For Bridges, Bain's death in January 2013 was the hardest of all: "Conrad was more like my father than my real father," he told Dr. Oz in 2016. "Conrad was the guy who did things with me, took me fishing, talked to me about life."

He said that even when he was at his worst, Bain stayed in contact and came to visit him, adding, "I talked to him all the way up to the day before he died, actually."

Gary Coleman (1968-2010)

The actor behind wisecracking Arnold Jackson, best known for his catchphrase, "Whatchu talkin' 'bout Willis?," was earning $100,000 an episode at the show's peak but had little to show for it thanks to financial mismanagement by his parents and their advisers.

According to Bridges' memoir, the Colemans also made their son work long hours on the sitcom and numerous side projects even though he had a chronic kidney disease that, combined with his medications, limited his height to 4-foot-8.

In 1989, he successfully sued them and won back $1.3 million. But it was too little, too late and within 10 years, he was working as a security guard and had to file for bankruptcy protection.

At that point, he was in the headlines more for legal problems than new projects. In 1998, he was charged with assaulting an autograph seeker. From 2007 to the end of his life, he was involved in a string of altercations, including two with his estranged wife, Shannon Price. He died May 28, 2010, at age 42.

Dana Plato (1964-1999)

At her mother's direction, Plato gave up a promising career as a junior figure skater to take on the role of Kimberly Drummond, the biological daughter of Conrad Bain's character. While on the show, she began experimenting with pot, cocaine and alcohol, suffering an overdose at age 14. She became pregnant in 1983 and the following year, she married boyfriend Lanny Lambert and gave birth to a son, Tyler Edward Lambert. (Plato and Lambert divorced in 1990 and she lost custody.)

In 1984, producers subsequently wrote her out of "Diff'rent Strokes," worried about the effect her personal life would have on their wholesome family comedy. She returned as a recurring guest star in the show's final two seasons.

Like Coleman, Plato lost much of her income from the show to unscrupulous financial managers. Increasingly desperate for money, she posed for Playboy and took roles in B movies before moving to Las Vegas, where she worked at a dry-cleaning shop.

In 1991, she was arrested after she used a pellet gun to hold up a video-store clerk, who promptly told 911 that the business had been "robbed by the girl who played Kimberly on 'Diff'rent Strokes.' " The following year, she was also arrested for forging a prescription.

Plato gave showbiz another shot towards the end of her life. The soft-core pornography got more press but she also broke ground by becoming the first actor to star in a video game.

She died of a drug overdose (later ruled a suicide) on May 8, 1999, one day after she professed to be clean during an interview with Howard Stern. Eleven years later, almost to the day of Plato's death, her son committed suicide.