Gary traces Coleman's life from his humble origins in Zion, Ill., to superstardom on Diff'rent Strokes before he'd even reached teenagedom, to his rocky adult life, which was beset by turbulent relationships, exploitative financial entanglements, and a struggle to maintain his acting career.
Coleman's mother Sue remembers that "at about 2 years old, Gary started to run a temperature, and that's when they found out that he had this congenital kidney defect." Coleman was diagnosed with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, a degenerative kidney disease which causes irreversible internal scarring.