Danny Bonaduce Biography

Danny Bonaduce started acting at age four, but it was his role as red-haired, smart-aleck Danny Partridge in TV’s The Partridge Family (1970-74, also starring Shirley Jones and David Cassidy) that made him a star at age 10.

The luster of stardom wore off in the 1980s and Danny Bonaduce became famous for his tabloid-ready lifestyle, including widely-reported substance abuse and a notorious 1991 incident in which he beat up a cross-dresser. Even the marriage that he credits with setting him straight was tabloid fodder: Bonaduce and his wife, Gretchen, married seven hours after first meeting each other in 1990.

Later in that decade, Bonaduce found a new career in radio, and he hosted shows in Chicago, Detroit and New York before landing a gig on KYSR in Los Angeles as the co-host of “The Jamie and Danny Show.” A semi-reformed bad boy, Bonaduce became a family man and a regular member of the syndicated talk show The Other Half (with Dick Clark).

Known for embracing his peculiar brand of celebrity, Danny Bonaduce released an autobiography, Random Acts of Badness, in 2001. He also appeared on Fox TV’s Celebrity Boxing, duking it out with another child star, Barry Williams, who played older son Greg Brady on TV’s The Brady Bunch. His 2005 cable TV reality show, Breaking Bonaduce, was notorious for his (unsuccessful) off-camera suicide attempt.