VintageKell - Your post of Actress;
Tracey Gold reminded me of
Dana Plato (November 7, 1964 – May 8, 1999) from the U.S. television sitcom
Diff'rent Strokes. I swear, that show was
cursed big time.
1983 /19 years old
She admitted to drinking and using recreational drugs during her years on Diff'rent Strokes.
Plato began her career doing television commercials (in over 100) and than played the angelic Kimberly Drummond from 1978 until 1986 before her career went off the cliff, forcing Plato to chose roles that could be considered erotic or even pornographic - her most infamous film is 1997's Different Strokes: The Story of Jack and Jill...and Jill and was rated X.
She appeared in the June 1989 issue of Playboy to show of her new breast implants.
In 1991, Plato took a job at a dry-cleaning store to support herself. On February 28, she entered a video store, produced a gun, and demanded the money from the register. The clerk called 911 saying, "I've just been robbed by the girl who played Kimberly on Diff'rent Strokes". Fifteen minutes after the robbery, Plato returned to the scene and was immediately arrested. The gun was only a pellet gun and the robbery netted Plato $164.
Police found that Plato apparently took an accidental drug overdose of the painkiller Lortab along with Valium on May 8, 1999, Mother's Day
Almost 11 years to the day of Dana Plato's death, on May 6, 2010, Plato's son Tyler Lambert died at age 25 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Her VEF thread is here 
On a side note: This was actually a hard one to write for many reasons, mostly because so many actions and decisions by others (who were close to her) and than a slew of tragic events took her to a place (within her mind) that was dark. Through an inner strength and love of life she lifted herself out of that darkness and was starting to turn things around.
Sadly, even her death was misunderstood by many as a suicide rather than the accidental death the police believed it to be.
(Her death was ruled a suicide in technical compliance of the laws of the State of Oklahoma.) Additional info can be found
here.