Kim Richards

For roughly four years in the mid-seventies Kim Richards was one of the most-used child actors in America, and the range of what she was used for is the striking part. Disney cast her as Tia Malone in Escape to Witch Mountain and again in Return from Witch Mountain. In the same period she is the child in the sequence everybody remembers from John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13, a child in the killer-car picture The Car, a hostage in Raid on Entebbe, and one of the children in a television horror film about a demonic dog.

She had started earlier. Prudence Everett on Nanny and the Professor ran at the top of the seventies, with guest work on Disney's anthology series and the ABC Afterschool Special around it. What she had was a self-possession that read as adult. She does not perform childishness, and that is precisely why thriller and horror directors kept hiring her while Disney was selling her as the wholesome option.

The adult career never consolidated. Cheryl in Meatballs: Part II and Frankie Croyden in Tuff Turf are the teen-movie years, then the gaps get long. In 2010 she resurfaced on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alongside her sister Kyle, in the principal cast for five seasons and appearing as a guest afterwards, and for a large audience that is now the whole association. The late screen credits are mostly nods to the old work: Sandy in Black Snake Moan, Tina in Race to Witch Mountain, a part in Sharknado 3.