Eric Roberts —Julia’s big brother — was an insanely talented, Oscar-nominated actor, ruggedly handsome, and should have been a lasting star.
An addiction to cocaine led to personal problems that hampered his career, including altercations with paparazzi, an assault on a police officer, and another on his wife Eliza (the latter of which led to him finally getting clean, and they remain married over 20 years later). He and his sister Julia were also estranged for many years due to his drug abuse, although they reconciled in the early 2000s.
He is clean now, and he does still act, but most of his larger roles these days are in low budget or straight to DVD movies. He had the potential to be a huge, enduring star, but his career never fully recovered.
Jeff Conaway was best known as wisecracking Kenickie in Grease and struggling actor Bobby Wheeler on “Taxi”. He was handsome, charismatic, and had great comic timing; he could have done great things.
But like Roberts, drug addiction affected his career. Conaway was a survivor of childhood physical and sexual abuse, and turned to drugs in his teens to cope. But it was a back injury suffered on the set of Grease that introduced prescription opiates into the mix, and everything escalated.
He would spend the rest of his life fighting addiction while taking guest spots on television and roles in low budget films. But he never reached his potential. He died of overdose-related pneumonia and sepsis on May 27, 2011 at age 60.
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