I would have had a normal life, and have friends."
Herb Ball/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty
“People didn’t want Gary, they wanted Arnold Jackson.
That was common,” says Anna Gray, Coleman’s former girlfriend.
Gary Coleman.Herb Ball/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty
“Gary absolutely despised that catchphrase.
He called it ‘that line - I’m not saying that line!'”
“That’s how he felt, " she notes.
Gary Coleman.WireImage
“‘I’m just making money, but I’m not happy.’
He wasn’t happy.”
Because now here we are in 1993, I’m 25 years old, I’m a world-renowned celebrity.
There’s no place I can go where someone doesn’t know me.
I love the work.
I truly love making people laugh.
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The following year, Colemanassaulted a fanafter she persisted in asking him for an autograph.
“He constantly referred to himself as God’s punching bag,” Mial recalls.
“He felt like one of life’s jokes.
And he was never meant to be a person of good fortune.”
Colemanfiled for bankruptcyin 1999 and eventuallytook his mother to courtover claims that his estate was being mismanaged.
