Johnny Whitaker, child star of the classic 1960s sitcom Family Affair, was spotted at a recycling center in this week aged 66.
Showbiz
Johnny Whitaker Resurfaces at 66 After Struggles
Johnny Whitaker, child star of the classic 1960s sitcom Family Affair, was spotted at a recycling center in California this week aged 66.He began acting at thre...
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He began acting at three and, by the time he was six, landed his best-remembered role as an orphan boy on the CBS series, which ran for five seasons.
After the show ended, he also played the title character in the 1973 musical movie Tom Sawyer opposite a young pre-stardom .
Among his notable jobs was being the first actor to play the General Hospital character Scotty Baldwin, who is initially seen on the show as a small child and grows up over the course of several seasons into an aging man.
However his career as a child star also plunged him into what he described as an 'environment where drinking and using drugs was acceptable,' with him attending Hollywood parties at 16 and becoming an 'addict' before eventually sobering up and starting a new life as a drug counselor, via Fox News.
He cut a casual figure when he resurfaced this week in Santa Clarita - just north of County - wearing a loose-fitted t-shirt with sweats and slippers.
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Johnny Whitaker, aged about eight, is pictured in a 1967 publicity shot for his star-making sitcom Family Affair along with Anissa Jones, who played his twin sister
After the show ended, he also played the title character in the 1973 musical movie Tom Sawyer opposite a young pre-stardom Jodie Foster
Whitaker lent himself a touch of relief from the beating California rays with a baseball cap that cast a shadow over his complexion and his silver beard.
Born in the Los Angeles suburb of Van Nuys in 1959, he was discovered while singing with his sisters in their church choir at the age of three.
(from left) Anissa Jones, Brian Keith, Kathy Garver, Sebastian Cabot and Johnny Whitaker are pictured in a 1966 publicity shot for Family Affair, which ran for five seasons on CBS
Whitaker is pictured as Tom Sawyer with a 10-year-old Jodie Foster - three years away from her Taxi Driver fame - in the role of his girlfriend Becky Thatcher
He had previously worked with Foster on the 1972 movie Napoleon and Samantha, a little-known adventure picture also starring a live lion
He left acting in 1974 and then - having been a Mormon from childhood - attended Brigham Young University in Utah and served as a missionary in Portugal.
His post-acting work included managing Diff'rent Strokes star Dana Plato, working at his sister's talent agency and acting as a computer consultant for CBS - the network that had run his star-making sitcom Family Affair years earlier.
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From 1984 until 1988 he was married to a woman named Symbria Wright, who left him for 'the man who gave me my bachelor party,' he said.
His failed marriage was one of the contributing factors to his drift from his religion and his plunge into 10 years of 'sex, drugs, rock and roll' that resulted in his excommunication from Mormonism, he told the local Utah new station KSL.
Whitaker's family staged an intervention in 1997 and he enrolled in a 12-step program, remaining sober ever since, he confirmed in a 2025 interview.
Now a drug counselor, he founded the nonprofit Paso Por Paso for Spanish-speaking recovering addicts in 2003, and he was rechristened into the Mormon church in 2019.
In 2002 he guest-starred on one episode of a Family Affair reboot, opening the door to a smattering of returns to the screen in the ensuing decades.
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His latest showbiz jobs include an episode of the game show Cram in 2003, an independent family film called A Talking Cat!?! in 2013 and five episodes of a revival of Sigmund and the Sea Monsters in 2016 and 2017.
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