Five actors who became criminals
Hoo-boy, this was a difficult list to write. To be clear, that’s not because there’s a shortage of actors who are wrong ‘uns. Quite the opposite, in fact.
No, the difficult part was narrowing this list down from the sheer amount of actors who only dabbled in brushes with the law and got away with it scot-free. We all know the stories of Hugh Grant, Lindsay Lohan and Winona Ryder by now; there’s no reason to go over them again. Neither is this a list of actors with a criminal past. The likes of Tim Allen and particularly Danny Trejo are stories for another list entirely, one a lot more hopeful than this one.
No, here, I want to talk about the stories we don’t hear so often. The stories of actors who, after an initial brush with fame, find themselves committing terrible crimes on the way back down the fame ladder. With one notable exception, there will not be anyone whose crimes were committed due to alcohol and drug addiction, for much the same reason as detailed above. We’re looking for people who turned to a life of crime and stuck to it for longer than anyone should.
So, when you’re next stuck at work and wondering how it all went wrong, just remember one thing. As this list proves, it could be so, so much worse.
Five actors who became criminals:
Robert Downey Jr
Here, we have the sole example on this list of an actor turning to crime in the depths of their addiction, because this wasn’t a one-off mistake that caused RDJ to turn his life around.
No, there was a period of time where it looked like the once and future crown prince of Hollywood had gone far past the point of no return. Seriously, if you only know Robert Downey Jr from his Iron Man and Marvel-assisted imperial phase, you might not realise just how much of a miracle it is that he’s alive, let alone out of jail.
The first big sign that this went far beyond a starlet’s debaucherous phase was Downey’s first major arrest in 1996, when he was brought in for speeding down Sunset Boulevard while possessing heroin, crack, cocaine and an unloaded magnum. Downey spent the next five years as a punchline, constantly being arrested for drug-related offences while people waited for the seemingly inevitable headline about his final, fatal trip. One that, thankfully, never came, and he was able to put his demons behind him in the most spectacular way possible.
Lillo Brancato
It’s almost too good to be true. A guy who made his name as an actor playing ruthless mobsters in The Sopranos, A Bronx Tale and Falcone, makes headlines for channelling all his fictional criminals into a real-life crime spree.
One that was fuelled by an addiction to heroin, and ended with a burglary gone so horrifically wrong that it ended with the death of the apartment’s neighbour…who also happened to be a cop. Sometimes it really just isn’t your day, is it?
On December 10th, 2005, Brancato was arrested by the New York City Police Department for the murder of Daniel Enchautegui, a NYPD cop who overheard Brancato and his accomplice Steven Armento (his girlfriend’s father) breaking into the building next to his. Enchautegui confronted them, and during their trial, it was found that Armento had fired the fatal shot. While he was convicted for first-degree murder, Brancato was found not guilty of second-degree murder, but guilty of first-degree burglary.
He was sentenced to ten years in prison, being released on parole in 2013.
Dee Jay Daniels
Everyone knows that being a child star fucks you up seven ways to Sunday. Even if your success continues into adulthood, the scars that the experience leaves you with never really go away.
There are a few things that can send a person into a tailspin, more like seeing a formerly clean-cut kid you knew and loved on an old TV show become a totally different person in adulthood, and there are few people who sum this up more dramatically than Dee Jay Daniels.
From the age of ten, Daniels was famed for a role on the sitcom The Hughleys, and parleyed this success into several other TV appearances. By 18, he knew he was done with acting and turned to a hip-hop career after bowing out with a role in the film Sky High. However, he made the headlines for all the wrong reasons when he was arrested for murder in 2011. He was acquitted, but admitted under oath to several gang affiliations, shown off with the most striking part of his new look, several large tattoos on his face.
C U Thomas and Paul Case
None of this is a modern phenomenon. In fact, the heyday of people beginning a career in film before flaming out into a life of crime was arguably the 1910s and 1920s.
After all, this was a time when a career in acting was somehow even less protected than it is today. It was also a time of, y’know, a depression that destroyed the world’s economy in one fell swoop. If you couldn’t get on the Hollywood bandwagon, there weren’t a whole lot of other options than a life of crime.
The best example of this was the case of two actors known as C U Thomas (Thomas Green) and Paul Case. After bit parts in a few western pictures, Thomas and Case reasoned that bank robberies must be as easy as they were in the movies and decided to go into business for themselves, holding up a bank in Blythe, California, for $5,000.
Turns out, they’re not as easy as they look in the pictures, and Case and Thomas’ hold-up took the life of a young cashier. They were arrested the same night and put to death soon afterwards.
John Wilkes Booth
Yeah, turns out murdering the most beloved president in the history of the United States of America will have a pretty radical effect on your reputation. Who knew?
Although that said, Abe Lincoln’s reputation actually skyrocketed as a result of his assassination. At the time, he’d made sure that the half of his country that hated his guts remained his countrymen by winning a civil war against them, which only made their hatred of him worse.
One of the people who hated him was John Wilkes Booth. What goes unremembered today is the fact that at the time, John Wilkes Booth was one of the most famous actors of his age. Yes, the murder of Lincoln by Booth would essentially have been like Barack Obama being offed by, like, Matthew McConaughey. Something to remember the next time something bizarre and horrible hits the news.
The world’s always been this insane; we just know more about it now.