What happens to a household name when households stop talking about them? Some actors understand this more than others. And perhaps the most dramatic example of this is the former actor Yasmin Bleeth’s career.
Thanks to her time on Baywatch, Yasmin Bleeth rocketed to worldwide fame. Unfortunately, she faced a series of struggles that effectively ended her career, forcing her to rebuild her life altogether. Just what happened to this former megastar, and what is she up to these days? Keep reading to discover the answer!
An early acting career
One of the funnier things about household names is that, for most audiences, somebody’s fame happens almost overnight. That might have seemed to be the case with Yasmin Bleeth, but the truth is that she spent plenty of years putting in the work before she became famous for running around with David Hasselhoff.
In fact, Bleeth’s first acting job occurred when she was only 10 months old. Back in 1969, she starred in Johnson & Johnson’s No More Tears baby shampoo. The love of performance seemed to stick with her, and she later had a very successful career as a model. Following that success, she began starring in Baywatch in its fourth season and quickly became a household name.
Life after ‘Baywatch’
Yasmin Bleeth ended up starring in a whopping 72 episodes of Baywatch. However, you can only rescue people on the beach for so long. Eventually, Bleeth parlayed her Baywatch success into a number of other roles.
For example, she appeared very prominently on the short-lived series Nash Bridges on CBS. After that, she landed a role on Titans. It seemed like her career was on the rise, but after her appearance in the 2003 Baywatch: Hawaiian Wedding, she never again appeared in another movie or TV series. And the reasons for that are more heartbreaking than most of her fans could ever imagine.
A relationship that was the beginning of the end
In 1996, Yasmin Bleeth began dating fellow actor Richard Grieco. The relationship was very serious: not only were the two engaged for two years, but the two also starred in the film Ultimate Deception in 1999. The relationship was so intense that it even survived an alleged fling that she had with Friends star Matthew Perry.
Unfortunately, Bleeth and Grieco never did end up tying the knot. Their relationship more or less dissolved in the year 2000, and she ended up taking it particularly hard. In order to cope with her painful breakup, Bleeth developed a drug addiction (more on this in a moment).
That would have been fairly bad on its own, but Bleeth also developed an addiction that might hit home for more of us: online shopping. In some cases, she could spend as much as $10,000 in a single night. Honestly, even in our worst Amazon binges, we’ve never been quite that bad!
Her struggles with addiction
Drugs are a particularly dangerous trap for celebrities. While substance abuse can be tempting for many people looking to escape their troubles, most people can only go so far into their addiction due to the sheer cost of drugs. For a big Hollywood star like Bleeth, it was possible to functionally buy as many drugs as she desired.
In her case, the actor ended up developing an unfortunate addiction to cocaine. And while it’s an open secret that many successful actors also enjoy using cocaine recreationally, Bleeth’s own addiction soon spelled doom for her career.
Realizing she needed help
At first, Yasmin Bleeth’s addiction to cocaine didn’t seem like a big deal. The star described how her makeup artist would help her cover up (quite literally) telltale signs such as nosebleeds. And the artist wasn’t the only one who helped cover for the actor. For example, her own publicist would tell people Bleeth suffered from sinus problems, which is actually true…they just left out how cocaine was exacerbating those problems.
Eventually, though, people would have to be blind to not notice the toll that the drugs were taking on Bleeth’s health. While her doctors warned her that she could be only a single nose infection away from death, everyone else noticed that most of her body shrunk down to nothingness while her nose just kept swelling. After she collapsed during a 2000 photoshoot, and after a few more years of struggle, the actor ended up checking herself into rehab.
In many ways, this was the best possible outcome for Bleeth. Not only did rehab help her kick the dangerous habit, but it also helped her meet the love of her life.
Yasmin Bleeth’s own happily ever after
While Yasmin Bleeth was in the Promises Rehabilitation Clinic in Malibu, she met Paul Cerrito, the man who would later become her husband. Later, she would joke about how their relationship bucked the traditional wisdom of rehab. Most people say you should avoid getting into a serious relationship for at least one year after rehab, but these two had so much chemistry that they hit it off right away.
The two of them ended up getting married on August 25, 2002. They are quite happy together, and Bleeth never again tried to get back into Hollywood life. Instead, she and her husband have lived happily ever after for over two decades. She no longer looks like she did back in her Baywatch days, but that’s not the point: in short, Bleeth looks happy, and she has seemingly found the kind of fulfillment from her relationship and her quiet life that she never found from running around with David Hasselhoff.