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Famous People Who Died of Drug Overdose | List of Celebrities Who Overdosed on Drugs
Addiction is a life-threatening disease, as evidenced by this list of famous people who died of drug overdose, including photos, birthdates, professions, and other information. You might also be interested in athletes who used to be drug addicts and celebs who were found dead in the bathroom. These celebrities who overdosed on drugs are listed alphabetically and include the famous drug overdose victims’ hometown and biographical info about them when available. These notable drug overdose deaths include modern and long-gone famous men and women, from politicians to religious leaders to writers.
Some of the biggest names in entertainment, especially rock stars, have died of a drug overdose. Jimi Hendrix, singer Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison are among a few rockers who bit the big one early. Heath Ledger did as well, and wasn't alive to see that he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in The Dark Knight. Funnymen John Belushi and Chris Farley also died of drug overdoses.
Other celebs who died of drug overdose include Curt Hennig, Anissa Jones, Christopher Pettiet, and actress Dana Plato.
Everyone on this list has overdosed on drugs as a cause of death somewhere in their public records, even if it was just one contributing factor for their death. From celebrity heroin addictions to using cocaine, hopefully we can learn a lesson from the actors, politicians, and musicians who died too young from drugs.
Ronald Belford "Bon" Scott (9 July 1946 – 19 February 1980) was an Australian singer, songwriter and instrumentalist, best known for being the lead vocalist and lyricist of the Australian hard rock band AC/DC from 1974 until his death in 1980.Scott was born in Forfar, Scotland, and spent his early years in Kirriemuir. He moved to Australia with his family in 1952 at the age of six, living in Melbourne for four years before settling in Fremantle, Western Australia. Scott formed his first band, The Spektors, in 1964 and became the band's drummer and occasional lead vocalist. He performed in several other bands including The Valentines and Fraternity before replacing Dave Evans as the lead singer of AC/DC in 1974.AC/DC's popularity grew throughout the 1970s, initially in Australia, and then internationally. Their 1979 album Highway to Hell reached the top 20 in the United States, and the band seemed on the verge of a commercial breakthrough. However, on 19 February 1980, Scott died after a night out in London. AC/DC briefly considered disbanding, but the group recruited vocalist Brian Johnson of the British glam rock band Geordie. AC/DC's subsequent album, Back in Black, was released only five months later, and was a tribute to Scotts’ death. It went on to become the third best-selling album in history.In the July 2004 issue of Classic Rock, Scott was rated as number one in a list of the "100 Greatest Frontmen of All Time". Hit Parader ranked Scott as fifth on their 2006 list of the 100 Greatest Heavy Metal Vocalists of all time.
Aimee Elizabeth Semple McPherson (née Kennedy; October 9, 1890 – September 27, 1944), also known as Sister Aimee or simply Sister, was a Canadian-American Pentecostal evangelist and media celebrity in the 1920s and 1930s, famous for founding the Foursquare Church. McPherson has been noted as a pioneer in the use of modern media, because she used radio to draw on the growing appeal of popular entertainment in North America and incorporated other forms into her weekly sermons at Angelus Temple, one of the first megachurches.In her time she was the most publicized Protestant evangelist, surpassing Billy Sunday and her other predecessors. She conducted public faith healing demonstrations before large crowds; testimonies conveyed tens of thousands of people healed. McPherson's articulation of the United States as a nation founded and sustained by divine inspiration continues to be echoed by many pastors in churches today.
News coverage sensationalized her misfortunes with family and church members; particularly inflaming accusations she had fabricated her reported kidnapping, turning it into a national spectacle. McPherson's preaching style, extensive charity work and ecumenical contributions were a major influence on Charismatic Christianity in the 20th century.
Kenneth Charles Williams (22 February 1926 – 15 April 1988) was an English actor, best known for his comedy roles and in later life as a raconteur and diarist. He was one of the main ensemble in 26 of the 31 Carry On films, and appeared in many British television programmes and radio comedies, including series with Tony Hancock and Kenneth Horne.Williams grew up in Central London in a working-class family. He served in the Royal Engineers during World War II, where he first became interested in becoming an entertainer. After a short spell in repertory theatre as a serious actor, he turned to comedy and achieved national fame in Hancock's Half Hour, appearing throughout the radio series' run. He sustained continued success throughout the 1960s and '70s with his regular appearances in Carry On films, and subsequently kept himself in the public eye with chat shows and other television work.
Though Williams was fondly regarded in the entertainment industry, he suffered from depression and found it hard to come to terms with his homosexuality. He kept a series of diaries throughout his life that achieved posthumous acclaim.
Brad Barron Renfro (July 25, 1982 – January 15, 2008) was an American actor. He made his film debut at the age of 11 in the lead role in The Client, and went on to star in 21 feature films. His career faded rapidly because of alcoholism and substance abuse. He died from a heroin overdose at the age of 25.Prior to being cast in The Client, Renfro had no acting background and had been living with his grandmother in a trailer park. Director Joel Schumacher cast him after looking around the country for a "tough kid" who had the necessary life experiences to understand his character. He soon attracted a large fanbase as he continued to star in movies like Tom and Huck and Sleepers. After 1998's Apt Pupil, however, a series of criminal arrests and stints in drug treatment limited his choice of roles.
Renfro's early death has raised questions as to whether Hollywood's systems for protecting child actors' welfare are adequate for at-risk youth acting in films.
Domino Harvey (7 August 1969 – 27 June 2005) was a British bounty hunter in the United States. She came from a well-to-do background, being the daughter of Laurence Harvey. Harvey's fame was increased posthumously by the 2005 release of the film Domino, which was loosely based on her life, in which Harvey was portrayed by Keira Knightley.
Robert Pilatus (8 June 1965 – 3 April 1998) was a German model, dancer, and singer. Pilatus was a member of the pop music duo Milli Vanilli, alongside Fabrice Morvan.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder (German: [ˈʁaɪ̯nɐ ˈvɛɐ̯nɐ ˈfasˌbɪndɐ]; 31 May 1945 – 10 June 1982), sometimes credited as R. W. Fassbinder, was a West German filmmaker, actor, playwright, theatre director, composer, cinematographer, editor, and essayist. He is widely regarded as a prominent figure and catalyst of the New German Cinema movement.
Success was not immediate for Fassbinder. His first feature-length film, a gangster movie called Love Is Colder Than Death (1969), was met with mixed reviews at the Berlin Film Festival. His next piece, Katzelmacher (1969), was a minor critical success, garnering five prizes after its debut at Mannheim.
In subsequent years, he made such controversial films as Pioneers in Ingolstadt (1971) and Whity (1971), which dealt with human savagery, before scoring his first domestic commercial success with The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972), and his first international success Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), both of which are considered masterpieces by contemporary critics. Big budget projects followed, such as Despair (1978), Lili Marleen (1981), and Lola (1981).
His greatest success came with The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979), chronicling the rise and fall of a German woman in the wake of World War II. Other notable films include The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), Fox and His Friends (1975), Satan's Brew (1976), and Querelle (1982), all of which focused on gay and lesbian themes.
Fassbinder died on 10 June 1982, at the age of 37, from a lethal cocktail of cocaine and barbiturates. Although Fassbinder's career lasted less than two decades, he was extremely prolific; by the time of his death, Fassbinder had completed over forty feature films, two television series, three short films, four video productions, and twenty-four plays.
Jean-Michel Basquiat (French: [ʒɑ̃ miʃɛl baskija]; December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) was an American artist of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent. Basquiat first achieved fame as part of SAMO, an informal graffiti duo who wrote enigmatic epigrams in the cultural hotbed of the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the late 1970s, where rap, punk, and street art coalesced into early hip-hop music culture. By the 1980s, his neo-expressionist paintings were being exhibited in galleries and museums internationally. The Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective of his art in 1992.
Basquiat's art focused on dichotomies such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and inner versus outer experience. He appropriated poetry, drawing, and painting, and married text and image, abstraction, figuration, and historical information mixed with contemporary critique.
Basquiat used social commentary in his paintings as a tool for introspection and for identifying with his experiences in the black community of his time, as well as attacks on power structures and systems of racism. Basquiat's visual poetics were acutely political and direct in their criticism of colonialism and support for class struggle. He died of a heroin overdose at his art studio at the age of 27. On May 18, 2017, at a Sotheby's auction, a 1982 painting by Basquiat depicting a black skull with red and black rivulets (Untitled) set a new record high for any American artist at auction, selling for $110.5 million. Basquiat's art has inspired many in the hip hop music community such as Jay-Z.
Scott Hastings Beckett (October 4, 1929 – May 10, 1968) was an American actor. He began his career as a child actor in the Our Gang shorts and later costarred on Rocky Jones, Space Ranger.
Rachel Roberts (20 September 1927 – 26 November 1980) was a Welsh actress. She is best remembered for her forthright screen performances as the older mistress of the central male character in two key films of the 1960s, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and This Sporting Life (1963). For both films, she won the BAFTA Award for Best British Actress. She was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for This Sporting Life. Her other notable film appearances included Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and Yanks (1979).
Roberts' theatre credits included the original production of the musical Maggie May in 1964. She was nominated for the 1974 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for the plays, Chemin de Fer and The Visit, and won a Drama Desk Award in 1976 for Habeas Corpus.
María Guadalupe Villalobos Vélez (July 18, 1908 – December 14, 1944), known professionally as Lupe Vélez, was a Mexican-born stage and screen actress, comedian, singer, dancer, and vedette.
Vélez began her career as a performer in Mexican vaudeville in the early 1920s. After moving to the United States, she made her first film appearance in a short film in 1927. By the end of the decade, in the last years of American silent films, she had progressed to leading roles in numerous movies like The Gaucho (1927), Lady of the Pavements (1928), and Wolf Song (1929), among others. She was one of the first successful Latin American actresses in the United States. During the 1930s, her well-known explosive screen persona was exploited in a series of successful films like Hot Pepper (1933), Strictly Dynamite (1934), and Hollywood Party (1934). In the 1940s, Vélez's popularity peaked after appearing in the Mexican Spitfire films, a series created to capitalize on Vélez's well-documented fiery personality.
Nicknamed The Mexican Spitfire by the media, Vélez's personal life was as colorful as her screen persona. She had several highly publicized romances and a stormy marriage. In December 1944, Vélez died of an intentional overdose of the barbiturate drug Seconal. Her death and the circumstances surrounding it have been the subject of speculation and controversy.
Scott Charles Bigelow (September 1, 1961 – January 19, 2007) was an American professional wrestler, better known by the ring name Bam Bam Bigelow. Recognizable by his close to 400 pounds (180 kg) frame and the distinctive flame tattoo that spanned most of his bald head, Bigelow was hailed by former employer WWE in 2013 as "the most natural, agile and physically remarkable big man of the past quarter century."Bigelow is best known for his appearances with the World Wrestling Federation, Extreme Championship Wrestling, and World Championship Wrestling between 1987 and 2001. Over the course of his career, he held championships including the ECW World Heavyweight Championship, the ECW World Television Championship and the WCW World Tag Team Championship. Bigelow headlined various pay-per-views including the first Survivor Series in 1987, the first televised King of the Ring in 1993, WrestleMania XI, and the 1997 and 1998 editions of ECW's premier annual event, November to Remember.
Bridgette Andersen (July 11, 1975 – 1997) was a California-based child actress and child model in American media. She starred in 1982's Savannah Smiles, for which she received her first of four Youth in Film Award nominations.
Age: Dec. at 21 (1975-1997)
Birthplace: Los Angeles, USA, California, Inglewood
Richard Shannon Hoon (September 26, 1967 – October 21, 1995) was an American singer-songwriter and musician. He was the lead singer of the band Blind Melon from 1990 until his death in 1995.
Age: Dec. at 28 (1967-1995)
Birthplace: Fairfield Township, USA, Lafayette, Indiana
Russell Tyrone Jones (November 15, 1968 – November 13, 2004), better known by his stage name Ol' Dirty Bastard (often abbreviated as O.D.B.), was an American rapper and producer. He was one of the founding members of the Wu-Tang Clan, a rap group primarily from New York City, New York, which first rose to mainstream prominence with their 1993 debut album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).His professional success was hampered by frequent legal troubles, including incarceration. He died on November 13, 2004, of a drug overdose, two days before his 36th birthday.Ol' Dirty Bastard was noted for his "outrageously profane, free-associative rhymes delivered in a distinctive half-rapped, half-sung style." His stage name was derived from the 1980 martial arts film Ol' Dirty and the Bastard (also called An Old Kung Fu Master, starring Yuen Siu-tien).
Age: Dec. at 35 (1968-2004)
Birthplace: New York City, USA, Fort Greene, New York
Reinaldo Arenas (July 16, 1943 – December 7, 1990) was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright known as an early sympathizer, and later critic of Fidel Castro and the 1959 revolution, and a rebel of the Cuban government.
Brian Samuel Epstein (; 19 September 1934 – 27 August 1967) was an English music entrepreneur who discovered and managed the Beatles. He was often referred to as a "fifth" member of the group.
Epstein was born into a family of successful retailers in Liverpool, who put him in charge of their music shop. Here he displayed a remarkable gift for talent-spotting, and got a strong intuition about the potential of an unknown four-man group, The Beatles, at a lunchtime concert at Liverpool's Cavern Club in 1961. Although he had no experience of artist management, Epstein put them under contract and insisted that they abandon their scruff-image in favour of a new clean-cut style, with identical suits and haircuts. He then persuaded George Martin of the prestigious EMI group to produce their records. In August 1962, drummer Pete Best was replaced with Ringo Starr, and the group's familiar line-up was established.
Within months, the Beatles' fame had swept the world, and Epstein accompanied them to America, where he was besieged by merchandising offers, but had signed away 90 per cent of the rights in advance. This is viewed as his one miscalculation. Some of Epstein's other young discoveries had also prospered at this time under his management. They included Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, Tommy Quickly, and Cilla Black, his only female client.
As a gay man, Epstein had to observe great discretion in public, since homosexuality was still illegal in the UK, although he tolerated a certain amount of banter about it in private. (John Lennon quipped that his memoirs A Cellarful of Noise should have been titled A Cellarful of Boys.) On the day of his death, a group of rent boys had failed to arrive by appointment at his country house, and he returned to London, where he died of a drug overdose, ruled as accidental.
Philip Parris Lynott (, LY-nət; 20 August 1949 – 4 January 1986) was an Irish musician and songwriter. His most commercially successful group was Thin Lizzy, of which he was a founding member, the principal songwriter, lead vocalist and bassist. He was known for his distinctive plectrum-based style on the bass, and for his imaginative lyrical contributions including working class tales and numerous characters drawn from personal influences and Celtic culture.
Lynott was born in the West Midlands of England, but grew up in Dublin with his grandparents. He remained close to his mother, Philomena, throughout his life. He fronted several bands as a lead vocalist, including Skid Row alongside Gary Moore, before learning the bass guitar and forming Thin Lizzy in 1969. After initial success with "Whiskey in the Jar", the band had several hits in the mid-1970s with hits such as "The Boys Are Back in Town", "Jailbreak" and "Waiting for an Alibi", and became a popular live attraction combining Lynott's vocal and songwriting skills with dual lead guitars. Towards the end of the 1970s, Lynott also embarked upon a solo career, published two books of poetry, and after Thin Lizzy disbanded, he assembled and fronted the band Grand Slam, of which he was the leader until it folded in 1985.
Following Thin Lizzy, Lynott increasingly suffered drug-related problems, particularly an addiction to heroin. In 1985 he had a final chart success with Moore, "Out in the Fields", followed by the minor hit "Nineteen", before his death on 4 January 1986 from sepsis secondary to pneumonia. He remains a popular figure in the rock world, and in 2005 a statue in his memory was erected in Dublin.
Nicholas Rodney Drake (19 June 1948 – 25 November 1974) was an English singer-songwriter known for his acoustic guitar-based songs. Though he failed to find a wide audience during his lifetime, his work has since achieved wider recognition.Drake signed to Island Records when he was 20, while a student at the University of Cambridge. He released his debut album, Five Leaves Left, in 1969, followed by the jazzier, more upbeat Bryter Layter (1971) and the sparse Pink Moon (1972). The albums sold, in total, fewer than 4,000 copies in his lifetime. Drake's reluctance to perform live or give interviews contributed to his lack of success.
Drake suffered from depression, a condition evident in his lyrics. After recording Pink Moon, he withdrew from performance and retreated to his parents' home in rural Warwickshire. In 1974, aged 26, Drake died from an overdose of approximately 30 amitriptyline pills, a prescribed antidepressant. His cause of death was determined as suicide.
The 1979 release of the retrospective album Fruit Tree triggered a reassessment of Drake's music. By the mid-1980s, he was credited as an influence by such artists as Robert Smith, David Sylvian, and Peter Buck. In 1985, the Dream Academy reached the UK and US charts with "Life in a Northern Town", a song written about and dedicated to Drake. By the early 1990s, he had come to represent a "doomed romantic" musician in the UK music press. The first Drake biography was published in 1997, followed in 1998 by the documentary film A Stranger Among Us. In 1999, his song "Pink Moon" was used in a Volkswagen commercial, boosting his US album sales. By 2014, more than 2.4 million Nick Drake albums had been sold in the UK and the US.
Marguerite "Maggie" McNamara (June 18, 1928 – February 18, 1978) was a stage, film, and television actress and model from the United States. McNamara began her career as a teenage fashion model. She came to public attention in the controversial film The Moon Is Blue directed by Otto Preminger, reprising the role she played in the Chicago production of the play. She earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for her role in the film.
By the mid-1950s, McNamara's career began to decline. She appeared in two films after The Moon Is Blue and made her final film in 1963. After five guest-starring roles in television series in early 1960s, she retired from acting. For the remainder of her life, she worked as a typist in New York City. On February 18, 1978, McNamara died of a barbiturate overdose at the age of 49.
Paula Elizabeth Yates (24 April 1959 – 17 September 2000) was an English television presenter and writer, best known for her work on two television programmes, The Tube and The Big Breakfast. She was in a relationship with musician Bob Geldof from 1976 to 1996. Yates died of a heroin overdose in 2000.
Brenda Nokuzola Fassie (3 November 1964 – 9 May 2004) was a South African anti-apartheid Afropop singer. Affectionately called MaBrrr by her fans, she was sometimes described as the "Queen of African Pop", the "Madonna of The Townships" or simply as The Black Madonna. Her bold stage antics earned a reputation for "outrageousness".
Zoë Tamerlis Lund (February 9, 1962 – April 16, 1999), also known as Zoë Tamerlis and Zoë Tamerlaine, was an American musician, model, actress, author, producer, political activist and screenwriter. She was best known for her association in two films with film director Abel Ferrara: Ms .45 (1981), in which she starred, and Bad Lieutenant (1992), for which she co-wrote the screenplay.
Michael John Lockwood (August 25, 1971 – November 6, 2003) was an American professional wrestler. He was best known for his appearances with the World Wrestling Federation/World Wrestling Entertainment from 1999 to 2003 under the ring names Crash Holly or simply Crash.Lockwood debuted in 1989 and spent a decade wrestling on the independent circuit before joining the World Wrestling Federation in 1999 as Crash Holly. He formed a tag team with his kayfabe cousin Hardcore Holly, with whom he won the WWF World Tag Team Championship. The Holly Cousins was expanded into a stable with the addition of Molly Holly in 2000. During his WWF/WWE career, Lockwood held the WWF/WWE Hardcore Championship on 22 occasions, with many of his reigns coming during a period when the title was defended "24/7". After being released from WWE in June 2003, Lockwood joined NWA Total Nonstop Action as Mad Mikey, where he remained until his death later that year.
In addition to his 22 reigns as WWF/WWE Hardcore Champion and single reign as WWF World Tag Team Champion, Lockwood was a one-time WWF European Champion, and one-time WWF Light Heavyweight Champion.
Elmyr de Hory (born Elemér Albert Hoffmann; Budapest, April 14, 1906 – Ibiza, December 11, 1976) was a Hungarian-born painter and art forger, who is said to have sold over a thousand forgeries to reputable art galleries all over the world. His forgeries garnered celebrity from a Clifford Irving book, Fake (1969); a documentary essay film by Orson Welles, F for Fake (1974); and a biography by Mark Forgy, "The Forger's Apprentice: Life with the World's Most Notorious Artist" (2012).
Richard Trenton Chase (May 23, 1950 – December 26, 1980) was an American serial killer who killed 6 people in the span of a month in Sacramento, California. He was nicknamed "The Vampire of Sacramento" because he drank his victims' blood and cannibalized their remains.
Kenneth Gene Caminiti (April 21, 1963 – October 10, 2004) was an American third baseman who spent fifteen seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) with the Houston Astros (1987–1994, 1999–2000), San Diego Padres (1995–1998), Texas Rangers (2001) and Atlanta Braves (2001). He was named the National League (NL) Most Valuable Player (MVP) with San Diego in 1996, and is a member of the Padres Hall of Fame. He died of a cocaine and heroin (a speedball) drug overdose on October 10, 2004.
