Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be actors

I was very sad to read about the death yesterday of Diff'rent Strokes actor Gary Coleman, who was just 42. I'd had no idea what a troubled life he'd led since the show ended in 1986. But I suppose that I shouldn't have been so surprised. It's a familiar story, after all.

I remember being genuinely upset when I read about Jonathan Brandis' suicide in 2003, not just because he was the same age as me, and not even because I'd had quite the thing for him as a teenager when he'd starred in Stephen King's IT and later in SeaQuest, but because I just couldn't understand how anyone so young, so attractive, so famous could possibly want to kill themselves. Unfortunately, those successes turned out to be the pinnacle of his career which hit the skids after that, spiralling into the usual story of depression and self-loathing that abruptly ended with a young, gifted, attractive man whose best years were still ahead of him feeling as though he had no choice but to take his own life.

And there are so many others like him. A quick trawl through the tragically extensive list of former child actors proves that. Dana Plato, who played Kimberly Drummond in Diff'rent Strokes alongside Gary, died at the age of 35 after struggling with drink and drug addictions for many years. River Pheonix died of a drug overdose at the age of 23. Brad Renfro. Corey Haim. Then there are those who haven't quite reached that stage yet, but undoubtedly have suffered their fair share of problems - Edward Furlong, Lindsay Lohan, Macaulay Culkin, Drew Barrymore, Todd Bridges, the list could go on.

You could blame the Hollywood studios for putting money ahead of the welfare of these kids. You could blame the media for their supercilious chortling and zoom-lens voyeurism when careers nosedive and former child stars are "reduced" to "normal jobs". You could blame the parents for encouraging them to go down this route and then resorting to squabbling over the cash. You could blame society in general for creating the conditions which encourage kids to think that public exposure, no matter what the source, is the Golden Ticket to untold wealth and fame.

Whoever is to blame, perhaps the greatest tragedy is that this won't be the last time we'll be hearing a story like this.