Leif Garrett

Did You Know?

• Garrett was born in Hollywood, California, to Rik Nervik and actress Carolyn Stellar.
• He started his entertainment career at age five.
• He graduated from high school aged 15.

Career

Garrett and his sister Dawn Lyn worked a variety of acting jobs, including co-starring in the horror movie Devil Times Five as juvenile mental patients who go on a murder spree at an isolated ski resort. They also guest-starred in episodes of Gunsmoke and Wonder Woman. His breakthrough role was Jimmy Henderson in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969). He played the protagonist's son Mike Pusser in the Walking Tall movies (1973, 1975, 1977) and had a recurring role as Zack Russell on the ABC series Family.

Garrett portrayed Leonard Unger, the son of Felix Unger (Tony Randall), on The Odd Couple, a part previously played by Willie Aames. In late 1975, he appeared as Endy Karras in the CBS drama Three for the Road, which triggered a response from teenage girls and led to his first appearances in magazines such as Tiger Beat. He acted alongside Lee Van Cleef in two Spaghetti Westerns shot mainly in Israel: Kid Vengeance and God's Gun. Garrett played the title role in the television film Peter Lundy and the Medicine Hat Stallion and starred in the film Skateboard.

He appeared as Bob Sheldon in Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 adaptation of The Outsiders, sharing the screen with an ensemble cast including Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, and Emilio Estevez. In 1985, he starred in Thunder Alley as the lead singer of a pop band torn apart by drugs, and in Shaker Run as a mechanic. Other notable movies from the decade include Delta Fever, Cheerleader Camp, and Party Line, in which he played a deranged murderer in love with his sister.

Personal life

Leif Garrett’s romantic history includes a five-year on-and-off relationship with Nicollette Sheridan that ended in 1985. He also dated Kristy McNichol, his co-star on Family, as well as Tatum O’Neal and Justine Bateman. In the 1990s, he had a long-term relationship with actress Elaine Bilstad, who died from a heart ailment in 1999. By October 2001, Garrett was in federal bankruptcy court in Los Angeles.

Court records showed his only steady income was a $1,000 monthly gift from his mother, and his belongings were limited to clothes, some household items, and about $350 in cash. He owed $76,198 in unpaid credit card bills accumulated over four years. Garrett has said he began using drugs at 14. On November 3, 1979, five days before his 18th birthday, he crashed a Porsche 914 leased to his mother after a midnight party while driving to buy more cocaine.

His blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit, and he was also high on quaaludes. The crash left his passenger, Roland Winkler—whom he had met about a month earlier—a paraplegic. Neither wore a seatbelt. Garrett faced juvenile drunk-driving charges, lost his license for a year, and received a year’s probation. Winkler sued him in January 1980, alleging fault for the accident.