Within the Seventies, Leif Garrett got here to fame as a teenage actor on reveals together with Three for the Highway, Household, and The Odd Couple. From there, he launched a profitable singing profession—although it wasn’t at all times his voice on these recordings—and was a fixture in Tiger Beat journal and on the partitions of his teen followers. However, within the years since Garrett was a teen idol, he has been via laborious occasions, together with drug habit and authorized issues. Now 60 years previous, the actor has opened up about his struggles and his profession in a memoir and in interviews. Learn on to seek out out about Garrett’s life immediately.
RELATED: See Former Teen Idol Shaun Cassidy Now at 63.
In 2019, Garrett’s memoir Idol Fact was revealed. In it, he opens up about his life, together with his authorized woes and early profession. For example, he shared that he was rushed right into a singing profession and since he wasn’t skilled, he wasn’t at all times singing by himself on his albums. As a substitute, his voice was blended with one other singer’s to the purpose that he could not acknowledge it.
“I really feel folks do not actually know who I’m,” he informed Fox Information of his e book in January 2020. “There have been so many misconceptions about me. For years, there are specific issues about my life that simply did not sit effectively with me. I went via a lot as a teen idol. I wanted to share these truths.”
Garrett very publicly struggled with drug habit and the arrests that resulted from it. For example, when he was practically 18 years previous, he bought right into a automotive accident whereas drunk and excessive that left his buddy Roland Winkler paralyzed. Extra arrests involving medicine got here within the years that adopted.
Garrett is now sober. Requested how he stop medicine by Nearer in 2020, he mentioned, “I had a 90-day sentence in county jail. I used to be in court-ordered rehab earlier than that, after which my mother visited and informed me she had stage IV lung most cancers. I mentioned, ‘I am leaving to handle her—no person lives together with her.’ So coping with that, I began utilizing once more. So it was like, ‘Cuff him, carry him in,’ and I did the 90 days, and that was it.”
Garrett was on the truth TV present Movie star Rehab with Dr. Drew in 2010 and 2011. “I didn’t need to try this,” he informed Studio 10 in 2016. However, he thought, “It has been within the press getting excessive. Let’s do the press of not getting excessive.”
As well as, Garrett appeared on the collection I Love the ’70s, Concern Issue, and World’s Dumbest.
RELATED: For extra celeb information delivered proper to your inbox, join our day by day publication.
Garrett launched 5 albums between 1977 and 1981 however has put out music extra not too long ago, too. In 2003, he launched an album known as F8 and in 2007 one titled Three Sides Of...
“I play music as a result of I find it irresistible,” he informed Fox Information. “I’ll at all times find it irresistible. However I am not in a rush to do extra with it except it is completely proper. It needs to be as actual as potential.”
Garrett additionally informed Nearer of his current profession, “I am writing a script, I’ve bought a follow-up e book within the works, and I am concentrating on getting tv and movie work.”
“I’ve stored each photograph or letter {that a} younger girl despatched, telling me about being on their partitions and kissing me good evening earlier than they went to mattress,” Garrett informed Nearer. “It’s totally surreal and a bit embarrassing, however how flattering! I can not thank [my fans] sufficient, as a result of I am nonetheless in a position to do one thing I get pleasure from and receives a commission for it.”
That mentioned, he needs that some issues had been totally different. “I look again at my life and there are numerous issues I bought to expertise that different folks by no means get to do. And I am grateful for that,” he mentioned within the Fox Information interview. “I simply want it may have been a greater scenario. I want I had made higher selections.”
RELATED: Kristy McNichol Performed Buddy on Household. See Her Now at 59.