The rise and fall of Oliver! child star Jack Wild

In the late 1960s there were few child stars bigger than Jack Wild. As one of the lead actors of 1968’s Oscars-guzzling musical Oliver!, his may not have been the title role, but this diminutive 16-year-old’s turn as Charles Dickens’ Artful Dodger was the performance that everyone was raving about. Even when it came to the Academy Awards, of the kid actors, it wasn’t the movie’s lead Mark Lester that was nominated, but his dark-haired, saucer-eyed co-star.

Within a year, this 5’ 5” teen from Royton in Lancashire, had upped sticks to the US, to headline NBC’s big-budget fantasy show H.R. Pufnstuf. To anyone paying attention, it looked like Jack Wild had adult stardom in the bag, so effortless was his cheeky chappy charm. The series, and its 1970 spinoff movie, made him a millionaire before he was even 20.

But rarely has an actor’s star fallen so quickly and so dramatically. It was only in Hollywood that his alcohol consumption began to escalate, and while other thrill-seekers around him had an off-switch, moderation simply wasn’t part of Jack Wild’s DNA.

"At the start of 1980, I wasn’t working, so I filled in the time with… drinking," he wrote in his posthumously published autobiography, It's A Dodger's Life. "I began to make sure I had a good supply and always had some in the boot of my car, especially if I did manage to get some work and we were on location. Booze came before anything or anyone. And so it continued. Work became sporadic and gradually my friends disappeared. I couldn’t figure out where everything had gone wrong."

It was all a far cry from 10 years before when, arriving in LA for the 1969 Oscars, he was greeted by a giant billboard that read ‘Hollywood welcomes Jack Wild’. On his return to London, he was mobbed by the press.

"I had suits hand-made by a Mayfair tailor," he recalled in his book. "If I asked for something, I got it. In restaurants, I’d get the best table and there were always chauffeur-driven cars to take me everywhere."

More films followed in the wake of Pufnstuf; a reunion with Mark Lester in 1971’s Melody and a lead role opposite John Hurt and Donald Pleasence in the 1972 musical The Pied Piper among them. The actor’s star wattage was so dazzling in the early 70s that he was even courted by Capitol Records, in an effort to turn him into a pop star. 1970’s The Jack Wild Album may have stiffed commercially, but it did spawn the No.46-charting single Some Beautiful. (Three other albums followed, in 1971 and 1972)

But as Jack Wild grew up, the film world, it seemed, didn’t know what to do with him. "When I first entered showbusiness, of course I didn't mind playing younger roles," he reflected in 1999.

"However, it did bug me when I would be 21 being offered the role of a 13-year-old."

By 1979 his drinking was so out of control that, after being diagnosed with acute pancreatitis his doctor told him bluntly, "If you carry on drinking you will die." Instead of quitting completely, Wild simply cut out spirits.

Despite periods of sobriety over the next decade, he’d always return to the drink, having long given up his ‘no spirits’ rule. Once, while rehearsing for a pantomime, he began hallucinating, convinced that East End gangsters were planning on assassinating him. He was later taken to hospital and sectioned under the Mental Health Act, only to start drinking again after he was released. His intake on a typical day would, he later revealed, be half a bottle of vodka and a couple of bottles of wine.

With work having dried up, he found himself signing on, using his Unemployment Benefit money primarily for alcohol. His marriage to actress Gaynor Jones, who he’d wed in 1976, collapsed in 1985, forcing the actor to enter a drying-out clinic.

"As part of the therapy, I had to tell my life story," he recounted in his book. "I’d had a ball, so how had I ended up here? I tried to explain: ‘When children become stars in showbiz, it’s almost like becoming an orphan.

"You are taken from your normal surroundings and put on thrones and made out to be superhuman, and there is just so much time and money to play with but you’re not prepared, mentally, physically or financially for the life of a celebrity…’"

It would take another five years, but eventually Jack Wild did ditch the booze. After hiring a new agent, work began trickling in once more for the freshly-sober actor. There was even a role, as Much the Miller's Son, in the 1991 Hollywood blockbuster Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves.

Sadly, years of drinking and smoking caught up with Wild in 2001, when he was diagnosed with oral cancer. Three years later, he would have his tongue and larynx removed, only for the cancer to return in 2005.

"Until I was diagnosed with mouth cancer, I'd never heard of it," Wild told the BBC in 2005. "What I learned very quickly was that my lifestyle had made me a walking time bomb. I was a heavy smoker and an even heavier drinker and apparently together they are a deadly mixture."

Though he’d begun to work again in the years following his quitting alcohol, his career never returned to those heady days of the early 70s and his final roles were, due to his throat surgery, without dialogue.

His last film before his death in March 2006 aged 53 was a low-budget thriller, Moussaka & Chips, a movie that, by also starring his old Oliver! co-star Ron Moody, brought his big screen career full circle.

“I only wish I’d invested the money and not drank quite so much,” Wild said shortly before his death. “But other than that I don’t think there is much else I’d change.

"And I did have a lot of fun.”

Drinkline is the national alcohol helpline. If you're worried about your own or someone else's drinking, you can call this free helpline in complete confidence. Call 0300 123 1110 (weekdays 9am to 8pm, weekends 11am to 4pm).