Dana Plato Biography

Quick Facts

NAME: Dana Plato
OCCUPATION: Television Actress
BIRTH DATE: November 07, 1964
DEATH DATE: May 08, 1999
PLACE OF BIRTH: Maywood, California
PLACE OF DEATH: Oklahoma
Originally: Dana Michelle Strain

Best Known For

Dana Plato was a child actress on the television show Diff'rent Strokes. She fell into drug addiction and died of an overdose in 1999.

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Dana Plato

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Dana Plato. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 06:44, May 25, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/dana-plato-248617.

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Dana Plato. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/dana-plato-248617 [Accessed 25 May 2013].

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Dana Plato. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/dana-plato-248617. Accessed May 25, 2013.

She was let off easy, facing no jail time and only five years of probation. Plato violated the terms of her probation, however, by forging prescriptions for Valium. The judge sentenced Plato to 30 days in jail, followed by a drug rehab program.

But rehab didn't take for Plato, who died of an overdose on May 8, 1999, at age 34. She was found dead in her RV, which she shared with fiancee Robert Menchaca,

during a visit with family in Oklahoma. Her death was later ruled a suicide. Plato's son Tyler met a similar end on May 6, 2010, when he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, also in Oklahoma. The 25-year-old was said to have been experimenting with drugs and alcohol at the time of his death.