In an episode of Oprah Winfrey’s “Where Are They Now?” former child star Danny Bonaduce recounted the story of his teen years, when a downward spiral into drug addiction left him “famous and homeless” after the end of his hit 1970s series “The Partridge Family.”
“I lived right behind this dumpster but I lived in my car,” Bonaduce, now 53, recalled.
“I was still famous, and people had no idea I lived behind the dumpster… I’d be taking pictures with people and signing autographs.”
“When I knew they wouldn’t see me I would sneak back to my car… it was totally embarrassing to be famous and homeless.”
“The Partridge Family” ended in 1974, when Bonaduce was just 15 years old.
In the interview the red-headed actor recalls a conversation with his mother that he says helped him turn his life around as a teenage drug addict.
“She said, ‘I think you’re going to die very soon,'” Bonaduce said. “‘I want to make sure that I knew that I told you that I love you before I get the phone call that you are dead.'”
In his later years, Bonaduce would go on to face multiple arrests for drugs, and one especially high profile incident involving beating and robbing a transvestite prostitute in 1991. He also struggled with alcohol abuse.
“I was probably legally drunk for about 25 years,” he said.
Now, Bonaduce hosts a radio show in Seattle, and has managed a climb back to sober living and moderate fame through a few stints on reality shows over the years.
