From Child Star to Tragedy: How to Eat Fried Worms Actor Blake Garrett Dies at 33

Blake Garrett’s journey from promising young performer to tragic loss underscores a sobering reality facing former child actors: the challenge of building a life beyond the spotlight when the spotlight fades. The How to Eat Fried Worms star, who appeared in the 2006 children’s film as Plug alongside Adam Hicks and Luke Benward, died due to acute fentanyl toxicity, according to court documents obtained by Us Weekly on Monday, July 13. He was 33, and his death was ruled an accident.

Garrett’s early career showed real promise. He’d logged stage experience in local productions and touring shows before landing his film role, where he earned a 2007 Young Artist Award alongside the entire ensemble cast for Best Young Ensemble in a Feature Film. In a 2006 interview with The Oklahoman, Garrett spoke enthusiastically about his on-set experience, recalling a gravel-road bicycle scene where he actually hit the camera with flying debris during a sliding stunt—a take the filmmakers loved enough to keep in the final cut. It’s the kind of detail you remember from a kid who seemed genuinely excited about the work.

But like many child actors, Garrett chose anonymity. After filming wrapped, he returned to Edmond, Oklahoma, to finish school at Summit Middle School and stepped away from the industry entirely. That decision to live out of the spotlight is one many young performers never get to make—or never want to. For Garrett, it wasn’t a fresh start born of choice alone.

His mother, Carol, revealed to TMZ in February that her son had been struggling with substance abuse. Garrett moved to Tulsa to focus on his sobriety, and Carol believed he’d“truly turned things around.”One week before his death, he visited an emergency room in Tulsa complaining of intense pain and was diagnosed with shingles. It’s a cruel timeline: a moment of hope followed by medical crisis followed by tragedy.

The report noting that Garrett was residing in a sober living house in Tulsa speaks to someone fighting hard to reclaim his life. Addiction doesn’t discriminate—it finds former child stars and ordinary people alike. What makes Garrett’s story particularly poignant is how invisible his struggle remained to most people. He stepped out of the public eye two decades ago, and he stayed out. His death, and the revelation of how it happened, serves as a reminder that recovery is fragile, that pain can trigger relapse, and that the cost of the opioid crisis reaches across every demographic and every walk of life, including those who once smiled at us from movie screens.