Who were the most troubled stars of all time?

Charlie Sheen?

Judy Garland?

Marilyn Monroe?

Clark Gable?

Joan Crawford?

Why is everyone answering in question marks?

Vivian Leigh

Frances Farmer

Peg Entwistle?

Judy Garland, Natalie Woods, Phil Spector, Marilyn Monroe, Rivers Phoenix, too many to name.

Lindsay Lohan

Gary Busey

Mel Gibson

Shia LeBeouf

Montgomery Clift. Marilyn Monroe said he made her look sane.

Whitney Houston? The girl had everything, and then went into self destruction. I felt sorry for her.

Robert Walker

Janis Joplin

Kurt Cobain

Lenny Bruce

Mayo Methot

Gloria Grahame

Lupe Velez

Linda Darnell

Mario Lanza

Barbara LaMarr

Any of the ones who died of drug overdoses or who drank themselves into the grave: Mabel Normand, Gail Russell, Clark Gable, Judy Garland, Elvis Presley, John Belusi, William Holden, Chris Farley, Heath Ledger, Whitney Houston, Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Any of the ones who committed suicide (and not for medical reasons): Lupe Velez, Carole Landis, Marilyn Monroe, Jean Seberg, George Sanders, Rachel Roberts, Margot Kidder.

Freddie Prinze?

Grumpy Cat

Grumpy Cat

Probably the most famous ones of all time were Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland. But here are some others:

Montgomery Clift

James Dean

Frances Farmer

Marlon Brando

Jean Seberg

Clara Bow

Louise Brooks

River Phoenix

Charlie Sheen

Johnny Depp

Winona Ryder

Errol Flynn

Roman Polanski

Jane Fonda

Gig Young

Miss Kay Lenz had a tragic life.

Barbara Payton - after being hailed as a "hot new star" she wound up as a down-and-out alcoholic prostitute

Gig Young - drunk who killed his wife and then killed himself

Lawrence Tierney - drunken bum with a rap sheet a mile long

Tom Neal

John Phillips

Ryan O'Neil

Gail Russell

Carrie Fisher, Robin Williams, Lindsay Lohan, Jonathan Brandis , Corey Haim

Spencer Tracy, Ross Alexander, Capucine, Margot Kidder

Tie: Michael Jackson and Macauley Culkin. Hmmmmm...

Michael Jackson for the win

Peter Sellers. Supremely talented man, but totally crazy.

If you added singers to the list the list would go on forever: Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Amy Winehouse. Kurt Cobain, Keith Moon, Sandy Denny, Jimmy Page, John Lennon, Gram Parsons, Marvin Gaye....the list could go on and on and on.

Amy Winehouse owns this thread

Charles Rocket was no slouch.

Until you have a drug den that inspires an album cover, bye gurl

Speaking of crack whores....

Amy is near the top in my opinion. Drug addicts in general don't qualify automatically. Whitney didn't have to end where she did. She wasn't mentally ill or lacking in confidence. She fell in with a bad drug and a great deal of pressure in life. Her unfathomable talent was a burden all it's own. Not unlike Garland maybe, but Judy was troubled by mental illness and a long life of instability and self sabotage. Whitney had it all. If anything she had too much success, money and too many enablers.

Kurt Cobain and Amy were troubled from the start. So talented and so fundamentally depressed and destructive. Sad people who were never at home in their own being. Life long depression pretty much always wins out. Depends on how soon you start self medicating it.

Sometimes the trouble is circumstantial. Like the fallen stars who did nothing much wrong, but gave into despair and most often alcohol.

I would say that Rita Hayworth had one of the saddest lives I've ever read about or studied. A victim of every man who ever can near her. Starting with her father. She wasn't fundamentally a sad person. Men took her down and time and age and illness did the rest.

There are regular old dumpster fire human beings like Charlie Sheen and Phil Spector. But they are more sociopathic than troubled.

OJ

Robert Blake

ASASSN-15lh She burned so bright, with the white-hot intensity of a thousand, well, herselves, but she couldn’t sustain it.

At least that bitch went out with a bang though.

I said above, Linda Darnell, but I meant Carole Landis!

Spencer Tracy

Dana Plato

Amy Winehouse. She was photo'd battered, blood on her shoes, etc. She was so attached to her husband, who seemed like a loser. Waste of talent. Then, she died from ... alcohol.

Chad

Helen Lawson

R31 Whitney Houston could had simply gave a big "Fuck You" to the public and everyone around her then went on to have a happy wealthy life with her beloved daughter. Too bad she never had the courage to do that. She always did what people ask her to do because she thought she had to. And those told her what to do just wanted money from her. Just sad when everyone surrounding you are vultures.

And the saddest part is, after she died, her friends and people that knows her well only have nice words to say about her. The few bad people in her life ruins her, and continue to rip off her after her death.

Holy shit r30 that is some depraved downfall 😲

Errol Flynn was a deranged mess. But boy was he handsome.

Regarding Errol Flynn, from friend Alexis Smith...

[quote] On Flynn’s being diagnosed with a mild heart attack during “Gentleman Jim” (1942): “She pulled him aside and said kindly but firmly: ‘It’s so silly, working all day and then playing all night and dissipating yourself. Don’t you want to live a long life?’ Errol was his usual apparently unconcerned self: ‘I’m only interested in this half,’ he told her, ‘I don’t care for the future.’”

Brenda Dickson

Veronica Lake

Mama and me (with a "Z"!)

Neely O’Hara

I would elaborate, but it’s too painful to talk about

Gene Tierney, by far.

In and out of mental institutions, numerous shock treatments, suicide attempts, etc.

Richard Pryor. He was a train wreck. Set himself on fire while freebasing. Coke fiend. Wife beater. He was insane.

Courtney Love. How did this ugly, insane creature ever become a "star" in the first place? I guess because of sheer pathological determination and being in the right place at the right time. Where else could somebody like her become famous except in the grunge/punk era? And of course she bullied Kurt Cobain, who had genuine talent, into marrying her. She had a knack for glomming onto talented people and getting them to "help" her create her songs, which she took credit for. At any rate, she has always seemed absolutely psychotic.

[italic]I'll[/italic] elaborate, R48... Booze and dope, in a nuthouse, and married a fag.

Mama and me.

Did I already possht this? Sshcuse me (hic).

But he baked a delightful Apple Brown Betty, R50.

Ramon Novarro.

Sad.

R6, Too many "s"'s to read...

I don't think Ramon Navarro was "troubled." He just exercised very bad judgement by inviting two clods over for the evening. Which resulted in his very bad end.

Ramon was an alcoholic

Joey Heatherton?

R59, She should be a DL fave, having played Susan Hayward's daughter and Bette Davis' granddaughter in "Where Love Has Gone".

Betelgeuse!

Tatum O’Neal

Still rooting for her, though.

Natalie Woods had a split personality.

Chrissie Metz's scale.

No mention of Corey Haim yet?

VANITY, really messed up girl. AND a tragic life. On the surface she was a slutty chick - money grubbing fame hungry bitch too. So many of the women on this thread were surely messed with in early life. Fame and access exacerbated their problems and gave them an outlet to feel good- for a while.

But that shit haunts most women forever and the combination of narcissism and denial some adopt are deadly as they age. Men suffer from this too, but their destruction usually reaches outward.

VANITY was a very sweet girl, my brother knew her well. But the things she did to climb the ladder or later just to stay high, were pretty brazen and disgusting. She wasn't subtle about it. Troubled.

Margaret Sullavan. Widely praised as an actress, gushed over as a totally enchanting, "unique" woman, she was incredibly messed up emotionally. She was married four times, to prominent men (Henry Fonda, William Wyler, Leland Hayward). She claimed to "loathe" acting; then why in hell did she become an actress? Two of her children rejected her to go live with their father, which devastated her. Her last husband was a nice man who adored her but her mental condition worsened and it didn't help that she was going deaf. She died of an overdose of barbiturates; it's surmised she probably committed suicide. She daughter, Brooke Hayward, wrote a good book about her family called "Haywire." She's said that her mother may well have been happier staying in her native Virginia and being a schoolteacher rather than a Hollywood star.

Farrah Fawcett

R67 According to imdb, two out of Margaret Sullavans three children committed suicide. One by gunshot the other with drugs. That's quite a track record. At least Joan Crawfords kids lived. One even wrote a book, though I'm sure no one here has ever heard of it.....

Joan Crawford's children did not share her DNA.

R70 Yes. But Crawford raised those children, just as Sullavan raised hers until they chose to live with their father.

Huge English junkie Pete Doherty of indie band The Libertines. Somehow still alive at 43.

Another English junkie, Zayn Malik of One Direction. Took so many drugs he's now terrified of performing live.

Niall Horan. Massive Irish alcoholic who thinks nothing of downing 20 pints a night with his fat friend Lewis Fataldi.

Don't forget Anissa Jones, easily a competitor with Dana Plato for the coveted "human Phamracy suicide" award.

Phil Spector.

Lindsay Lohan.

It's Britney Bitch.

Madame X.

Paul Lynde--nasty drunk

Gloria Grahame---that lip obsession and having an affair (and later marrying) her stepson

Ryan O'Neal

Jan Michael Vincent

Marilyn and Monty

Vivienne Leigh. That poor woman had mental health issues and physical ailments up the wazoo.

Ryan O'Neal's first wife (Joanna Moore) was such a mess, she made him look like the picture of mental health by comparison.

More minor star/star adjacent: Kristin Nelson

Barbara Payton

Albert Salmi

Sian Barbara Allen, tragic.

Jessica Savitch, the news anchor. She was a coke addict and very emotionally disturbed. She had two disastrous marriages. One of her husbands committed suicide. She blew her career by stumbling over her word during a newscast, seemingly on drugs. She died in a freak accident. Her date drove their car into a canal; he wasn't drunk or stoned, it was just an accident. Both of them drowned, trapped in the car. Her dog, which was in the car too, died with her. Her dog was probably her closest lifetime companion. She was 36 when she died.

"Vivienne Leigh"

Oh, dear.

R84, Not Jessica's best moment . . .

Connie Francine had a lot of trouble with the rapes and acid attack. Left her without a nose and unable to bare children. She couldn't bare to be around them.

R69, Bing Crosby had four sons with first wife Dixie Lee. All four are deceased, two by suicide.

"Lindsay Crosby died on December 11, 1989, from a self-inflicted rifle shot to the head. He was 51. A family spokeswoman said Crosby shot himself to death in a Las Virgenes apartment after learning that the inheritance he relied on to support his family was gone. His distraught brother Dennis never recovered from Lindsay's death and committed suicide with a shotgun in May of 1991."

Miss Lynn Anderson. Her hair may have been fabulous, but her booze-filled life sure wasn't. She was once arrested trying to steal a Harry Potter DVD from a store!

MJ, King of Pedophiles

Lynn Anderson looks like Adele.

I beg your pardon R91?

R92, She cannot have my Rose Garden.

Pete Duel. For some bizarre reason, I dreamt of him recently. He was so handsome and so talented; he could do both comedy and drama equally well. He became a star in the tv series "Alias Smith and Jones"; he played his tv character Hannibal Heyes with a charming, relaxed persona. He was a young, good looking, successful actor...and he was absolutely tortured. He had epilepsy which caused him to have seizures. He became an alcoholic and while driving drunk caused an accident where a young woman was seriously injured. The state of the world depressed him; he was deeply concerned about social issues, especially the environment. His tv series was a success but he didn't like the grind of being on a weekly tv series and though he was wasting his talent. Basically, he was unhappy about pretty much everything. He had been going to AA and trying to stop drinking but on December 31, 1971 he got blind drunk and started playing with a loaded gun. He shot himself in the head and was dead at 31. His death was such a tragedy. He had everything, looks, talent, success, but it didn't matter. By all account, he was a well-liked, good hearted but deeply troubled man.

R19 and Amy Winehouse

R82 More information, please. I remember Albert Salmi and enjoyed his performances.

Montgomery Clift after his accident. He was so beautiful and then thought he was damaged.

Truman Capote. A brilliant writer who went right down the shitter.

R97 Drunk out of his mind before climbing in the car says there were plenty of problems before hand.

Niall Horan. He has a huge problem with alcohol and overeating and puts on 15lbs every year. He's gone from a cute twink to a lard whore in five years.

It's a gradual crazy, but I'm wagering it'll be Madonna.

Jane Fonda? She’s a great woman and still fighting the good fights in her 80s.

All the rock stars who flamed out in their 20s (Morrison, Hendrix, Joplin, Winehouse...) and then I’d put Garland, Whitney, Cliff, and Monroe up there. Michael Jackson too, although he’s hard to have much sympathy for-

Was his name George Rose? That Brit theater actor that moved to a Caribbean Island and adopted a local young boy who was really his lover and then the family murdered him?

Stars and their children seemed way more over the top fucked up in the so called good old days than they do today. In fact, a lot of people seemed to wind up more seriously screwed up during that time period. I know DL loves and romanticizes the period between 1950 and 1985 (and I'll admit the music and cinema was terrific) but it seemed to produce a lot of seriously damaged lives.

Axl Rose. He's a crazy man and always has been. Violently abusive to women, a real shitheel.

John Wilkes Booth

Andy Gibb

R104, Thanks for the warning.

R104, I would say more stupid than troubled . . .

In 1984, Rose purchased a holiday home in Sosúa, Dominican Republic, where he spent much of his time between his performances. Rose was gay and had no immediate family or permanent partner. He reportedly longed to have an heir. Shortly after moving, he took in a 14-year-old boy whom he supported financially and to whom he planned to leave his estate. He adopted the boy in January 1988.

On 5 May 1988, during a two-week hiatus from the national tour of Drood, Rose was tortured and beaten to death by his adopted son, the boy's biological father,  an uncle, and a friend of the father. The assailants tried to make the death look like a car accident, but soon confessed to killing Rose. Though all four men were charged and spent time in prison, no trial was ever held, and eventually all were released.

Rose is buried in an unmarked grave in a cemetery near his holiday home in Sosúa

R94, Elder gays will remember him from "Love on a Rooftop", where he and Judy Carne played newlyweds.

Pete Duell had a brother who looked just like him.

G.

R100 I didn’t know Niall’s problem was so bad.

Lana Turner was a hot mess. I am surprised there has not been a proper biopic made about her life.

R87 ,??????

R110

He was fucking the child. Then he started fucking another potential "heir", even younger, so the first one killed him.

Mama June

Ona Munson

Joyce Jameson

Bob Crane (Colonel Hogan of "Hogan's Heroes") His career nose-dived after HH and, despite frequent gigs in dinner theater, he fell into a life of BDSM and sex addiction before he was bludgeoned to death in an apartment in Scottsdale, Arizona. A business partner, who died four years later, was fingered for the crime, but repeated testing of evidence found in the businessman's car proved inconclusive.

You can't drop an obscure name like Joyce Jameson without explaining.

Max Collodi

R121 The movie Auto Focus (Greg Kinnear, Willem Dafoe) is about Bob Crane and his sex addiction.

Mama June is a "star" only in her own mind. But she's just a white trash freak show.

George Reeves (Superman)

R123, I love you

Eve Harrington

Zayn Malik of One Direction.

Huge success in the band, huge potential, beautiful voice, beautiful face, vast fandom but also a hardcore junkie and is to this day. He's cancelled tours, shoots for brands he was the face of, TV shows, radio interviews. Notorious for smoking weed in interviews with the NME and others, and then walking out before the interview was over.

Nowadays he barely has a career. No interview of any kind since 2018. He hasn't stepped on a stage to sing since 2016. He dropped a single last month and refused to promote it so it sank like a stone. Wasted in more ways than one.

Another vote for Bob Crane.

Chris Farley. Friends in Chicago saw him guzzling booze at a bar a few days before he died. They said they barely recognized him he was such a mess and that he was pounding shot after shot and got belligerent when they finally cut him off.

Joyce Jameson was a wonderfully delightful and quirky character actress, specializing in bimbos, bad girls, and oversexed hot-to-trots. I believe she was a longtime girlfriend of "Man From Uncle" Robert Vaughn. What were her troubles, R120?

James Dean. He was such tortured soul, supposedly due to a mother who died young and a cold distant father.

Has Antony Hamilton been mentioned?

R131, R120 might be thinking of Carol Wayne, Johnny Carson's frequent blonde bimbo sketch partner.

She mysteriously drowned in Mexico.

Jameson had a "substance abuse problem" and died from an overdose of pills and liquor.

"On January 16, 1987, Jameson committed suicide by overdosing on pills at the age of 54. Her body was cremated and her ashes scattered at sea."

Frances Farmer, Robert Walker

I thought Joyce Jameson wrote Finnegans Wake.

I thought Joyce Jameson was Joi Lansing's real name.

Dr Joyce Brothers wrote Finnegans Wake.

Whoever wrote it, it's news to me -- I didn't even realize Finnegan was asleep.

John Phillips.

Poor boyish Kes =

Proxima Centauri. Red dwarfs have it rough.

Aye.

George Raft had underworld mob ties and could be an unpleasant fellow

R146, And yet, he scored some major quality Hollywood pussy, Norma Shearer, Carole Lombard, Betty Grable, etc.

John Philip Sousa

Sousa led a double life. Posing as a time efficiency expert, he had a secret second family of 12 kids.

That wacked out bitch who liked to take a dump in our purses...Joyce Bulifant

I should've let Bret Somers beat the shit out of her the first time we caught her doing it.

Ricky Schroeder - arrested for domestic violence and now bailing murderers out of jail

Nicky Hilton, Elizabeth Taylor's first husband.

Silent film stars Jack Pickford and Olive Thomas. He was the brother of Mary PIckford; she was a Ziegfeld Follies girl who became a film star with an All American girl image. They married and their image was that of a wholesome young couple in love. But they were both promiscuous and hard core drinkers, partiers, and druggies. Thomas died mysteriously and horribly at age 25 by ingesting mercury bichloride, a topical medication that had been prescribed to Pickford to treat sores caused by his chronic syphilis. It has never been fully explained how she could have mercury bichloride by mistake and it was rumored she took it on purpose to commit suicide. Jack Pickford died 13 years later at age 36, of alcoholism. They were both truly doomed by their excesses.

Lindsay Hohan

[quote]Nicky Hilton, Elizabeth Taylor's first husband.

Nicky Hilton, one of the great stars. Of the hotel business.

How’s about Nicky Arnstein? Was he a star? That was troubled? By gambling?

Don’t forget about me!

HELLO??????

Look at me, I'm Sandra Dee!

R155, Nicky Hilton was a star by association. In addition to Elizabeth Taylor, he scored some quality pussy in his short life, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Joan Collins, Natalie Wood, etc.

[R160] I think you meant "by insertion".

What happened to Sian Barbara Allen?

R162, Richard Thomas

I thin Joan Crawford was possibly a wee bit troubled. She just took it out on other people instead of herself.

It would be simpler to start a thread about the least troubled stars...

Tara Reid (since Lohan has been mentioned.

Rose McGowan

Jonathan Rhys-Myers

[quote]How’s about Nicky Arnstein? Was he a star? That was troubled? By gambling?

Arnstein was never in The Show Biz so his being a star was irrelevant. He was, however, an open major league gambler and an alleged minor league gangster, so his name was sometimes in the press.

I told you I was trouble...

Michael Jackson beats anyone else above

Susu

The open ménage à trois among the bisexual Van Johnson, Keenan Wynne and their shared wife after Louis B. Mayer ordered Johnson to get married or be fired. Although I don't think any of them were actually troubled about it in the way we are discussing it here. Johnson already lived next door to Wynn and his wife and Wynn and Johnson simply switched houses after the immediate divorce and new marriage.

R66 much of Vanity’s troubles had to do with Nikki Sixx, a truly evil soullesss individual if ever there was. Nikki’s love, attention, and even his interest is an utterly destructive thing (just ask Vince Neil).

Not saying of course that Vanity didn’t start with problems, or that she shouldn’t have taken any responsibility. Just that it’s hard to go come out of darkness when you’re living with an incubus.

R171, crazy question, but was the daughter Van had with his wife not actually his, but Keenan's?

Who was that cute Disney boy actor, and maybe even a Mouseketeer, who turned out to be gay and was blackballed by Disney even though he was one of their highest earners. His life must of turned out hard though no fault of his own.

Tommy Kirk? A life of drugs and CATALINA CAPER, but he finally got off drugs and is still with us, R174.

Montgomery Clift

Susan Richardson.

R173, I don't know.

^ Should have added though that nothing would surprise me.

Dana Plato

Anissa Jones