Warning: contains graphic content and discussion of rape which some readers may find distressing.
Being a world-famous comic actor with an award-studded career spanning multiple decades, you might think that Cheers and Frasier star Kelsey Grammer has led a charmed life.
But many fans of his work are only just learning that Grammer's success has followed one of the most personally difficult and tragic backstories, so much so that some were left wondering how he managed to succeed 'after going through all that trauma'.
The 70-year-old star was raised by his grandparents from the age of two following his parents' divorce. Just 10 years later, he would lose the only continuous father figure in his life when his grandpa died.
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A year later, this tough situation for the young teen would get worse when his actual father, Frank, was killed in a brutal home invasion. When he went out to investigate, he was shot dead by a man named Arthur B. Niles.
Frank's wife later told the court that she had to drag his body out of the way after Niles threatened to run it over.
Niles was found not guilty following an insanity plea and spent a few years in court-ordered psychiatric care.
Sadly, the beloved actor's hardship only continued with another brutal act of fate just seven years later.
In 1975, when Grammer, then 20, was learning his craft at the Juilliard School, his sister was raped and murdered by spree killer Freddie Glenn, who killed three people in Colorado Springs before he was caught.
Karen had been abducted from outside her place of work, assaulted, and then had her throat slit by Glenn and two accomplices. When police officers later found her body, it fell to her older brother Grammer to confirm her identity.
In the wake of the ordeal, Grammer struggled to attend any further classes at the prestigious acting school and was kicked out, putting his acting aspirations on hold.
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"I abandoned the effort to find a reason to be alive," he told the Radio Times decades later, saying separately that he blamed himself. "It's not rational. But it happens anyway. I know a lot of people who've lost their siblings and blame themselves."
Sadly, Grammer's family tragedies did not end there.
Five years after his sister's murder, Grammer's two half-brothers from his father's second marriage also met an unexpected end, dying in a scuba diving accident.
After one had failed to resurface while exploring the seas off Saint Thomas, the other went down to look for him, with both ending up dead.
With so much unending personal tragedy, Grammer would have been forgiven for retreating from the world, but instead, he harnessed his natural acting talent.
A year later, he would land one of his breakthrough roles after being cast in a minor role for a Broadway production of Macbeth. Grammer ultimately ended up being handed the titular role after the show's lead dropped out.
After several more stage productions, at the age of 29, he at last graced our screens on the third season of Cheers as Dr Frasier Crane.
But while Grammer's acting career went from strength to strength in the following decades, the star continued to grapple with the tragedy of his past, suffering from alcohol and drug addiction for several years.
He later told Oprah that he had been 'running from the feelings that weren't comfortable' to live with. But eventually, after a shock heart attack in 2008, he took a step back and changed his life.
"Every one of us is going to experience some terrible loss," he told Vanity Fair. "I just got a big dose. For every story you hear that's tragic, there's another that's equally tragic or more so. I think you come to look at it as part of life."
Topics: Crime, Mental Health
William Morgan