Kristy McNichol is best known for playing Buddy on the '70s TV series "Family" and Barbara on the '80s TV series "Empty Nest."

http://www.tmz.com/category/memba-them/

Kristy McNichol is best known for playing Buddy on the '70s TV series "Family" and Barbara on the '80s TV series "Empty Nest."

http://www.tmz.com/category/memba-them/
Kristy looks very nice. She's aged very gracefully!

Kristy looks just wonderful.

Wow, both she and Christopher Adkins (from Pirate Movie) look great! He's even better looking than before and he still looks so young!!

Kristy looks very nice. She's aged very gracefully!
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I'm glad that Kristy is doing well.

I think people were cuter in the past, and I much prefer cute 70s/80s stars, like Kristy McNichol, over ultra sleazy modern Hollywood standards, any day... It seems sleaziness eventually kills cuteness in Hollywood these days, and someone who's cute in Hollywood now, eventually ends up looking like a porn 'star', which, to me, is the antithesis of cute, and not appealing at all... Thank God Kristy isn't starting in Hollywood now, and, therefore, always stayed cute :) ...

Kristy McNichol - Bipolar Disorder Derailed Her Career (http://bipolar.about.com/od/actorsandactresses/a/kristy-mcnichol-bipolar-disorder.htm)

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She is a survivor!

I always liked Kristy McNichol

She is a survivor!

If I'm not mistaken, Kristy's breakdowns were covered extensively in the tabloids, and in (at the time) more respectable mags like People (http://people.com/archive/cover-story-i-was-crying-all-the-time-vol-31-no-13/) and US, which actually did some journalism in those days. Initially the problem was stated to be child-star ego gone wild, with booze and drugs added on top. But when she had to drop out of that ski movie, which delayed production for months, she was said to have a "chemical imbalance" (http://people.com/archive/cover-story-kristys-crisis-vol-19-no-18/) which, in those days, just rendered her unhireable because of insurance issues. Mental illness wasn't discussed as much then, and she barely worked for a while.

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/sTo631ot80E/mqdefault.jpg

She bounced back five or so years later with Empty Nest (http://emptynesttv.com/home/show-info/articles-and-interviews/kristy-mcnichol-interview/), but the pace of the show proved to be too much, and her mental health problems surfaced again. One time, Kristy was on The Arsenio Hall Show (https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/carrie-fisher-going-through-one-of-her-manic-episode-on-arsenio-hall.1125050/#post-29243542) as a guest. When it came time to introduce her, Arsenio told the audience that she wouldn't come out. They had her on a phone line from back stage, broadcast so the studio audience could hear. They played it for laughs, but everyone knew this was very strange. Eventually she agreed that she would come out if the audience left (https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/classicwhitney/ot-the-arsenio-hall-show-to-premier-9-13-2013-t12122.html?sid=9db51fbeca566e324252bf488388005a#p512043), so they actually filed the audience out as they went to commercial break! This aired! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTo631ot80E) When they came back from commercial, she was onstage with Arsenio and they talked for a while. She left Empty Nest not long after that.

What the Hell Happened to Kristy McNichol? (https://lebeauleblog.com/2020/02/11/what-the-hell-happened-to-kristy-mcnichol/)

Kristy McNichol was a top teen star through the 1970’s with a role on the hit TV show, Family. When that show ended, McNichol’s movie career took off with two box office hits. But then, she suffered a very public breakdown while filming a movie in France. In the late eighties, McNichol bounced back with another hit TV show. But when Empty Nest wrapped up, McNichol called it quits.

What the hell happened?

Return to Television

Although McNichol’s movie career was fading, she found a new home in a familiar medium. She returned to network television with a recurring role on the Golden Girls spin-off, Empty Nest. Part of the appeal of the show was that it was a comedy. “I wanted to do something different. I’d done so much crying.”

For a time, McNichol enjoyed working on a steady television schedule. “The consistency really makes me feel good, because I don’t think there has been too much consistency for me in the past.”

In the early nineties, McNichol appeared in a trilogy of TV movies, Children of the Bride (1990), Baby of the Bride (1991) and Mother of the Bride (1993). Rue McClanahan starred as a woman who marries a younger man played by Patrick Duffy. McNichol also appeared in a couple episodes of Golden Girls playing her character from Empty Nest.

Empty Nest ran for seven seasons from 1988-1995. But McNichol wasn’t able to return for the final two years. When she turned 30, McNichol’s mental health took a turn for the worse. She decided she needed to take a more permanent break from acting to concentrate on her health.

McNichol was able to return to the show for the final episode in 1995. For all intents and purposes, the Empty Nest finale was McNichol’s swan song as an actress. She has a few minor credits like voicing the “Girl in Sub” on the Extreme Ghostbusters cartoon in 1997, but nothing substantial.

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This video is dedicated to Kristy McNichol, an actor who during the late 70s and early 80s was all over TV and movie screens.

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What Really Happened To Kristy McNichol?

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