She won five Grammies in 2008, but was probably much better known in the UK than the US. She was certainly famous for her music, but her struggles with addiction increased her profile. She’s a case where it’s difficult to disentangle talent and notoriety, especially since one of her major hits was “Rehab.”
Marion Barry.
Do tell your Conrad Bain story!
Amy Winehouse was incredibly talented, but from day one she was better known for her drug-and-alcohol fueled antics than she was for her music. I was not surprised at all when I heard she died.
Kurt Cobain. While he was more than a minor star while alive, he catapulted into the stratosphere of musical legends after his suicide.
If we start including people who were major stars outside the United States who only became notorious here for their wrongdoings we are probably go to double the amount of people we are talking about.
For example, as an American, I had no idea who Jimmy Savile was until after he died and was exposed as a major sexual predator. My friends and family didn’t know who he was either. So I’d put him on the list(as an American).
I had to look him up just now and I don’t live under a rock( usually ). I’m not sure he qualifies as famous in any real sense.
Kurt Cobain was a major star and a legend, due to his place in the grunge movement. You’d have to include Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, by that reasoning, and I certainly wouldn’t include them.
This is starting to become – “famous people who ended up with with a major scandal”. That’s not the same thing.
Just in case it wasn’t clear, I wouldn’t include her on the list, both because she was more than a minor celebrity, and because her problems may have actually benefited her career. Well, up to the point they killed her of course, but immediately after her death several of her albums went back on the charts.
And, like Amy Winehouse, they all died at age 27. 
I guess I would be remiss if I didn’t mention John Potter, local news-guy, who made National Interest for his “Sex Toys” quote: News 2 Blooper: Amazon vs. WalMart - YouTube
I was the guy who first uploaded this. Some other poster forwarded this somewhere else and it went viral.
Very Minor.
I acknowledged that he was already a atar before his suicide but you can’t argue that his popularity took on mythical proportions post-suicide.
It was the proportion of increase in fame of Kurt Cobain due to something bad happening to him (his suicide) that I was comparing/relating to what the OP had asked, which was of any minor stars who had become more famous for a bad reason. Not an exact fit but geez. Lighten up.
Grammys are American. She was a big star in America.
I would say that not only doesn’t he fit the criteria because he was too big of a star, his scandal greatly hurt his career and led to him being less famous.
Yeah. Kurt Cobain, Tupac, River Phoenix, Amy Winehouse, all such minor stars 
I might be wrong with my nomination in a way though - Scott Baio. I think he was a lot more well known in the US than he was in the UK (Happy Days was on TV but he himself wasn’t very famous) but these days he only gets in the news for being a right wing arsehole and that’s likely the only reason anyone under 30 would have heard of him.
He’s not a major star but probably better known in the US. He was a teen heartthrob for 70s kids in Happy Days. He was on the cover of Tiger Beat and those types of magazines. He is also nostalgic for 80s kids because of Charles in Charge. I see that recently he had a sitcom that was on for three seasons but honestly I never heard of it.
You don’t get out much do you?
Richardson is a member of both the Richardson and Redgrave families and she was married to Liam Neeson. Just being her made her famous. She won several awards including a Tony. Her early death did not really add much to her fame.
Payne Stewart won the PGA championship once and the US Open twice. The last Open win was months before his death. He was a quite well known golfer. I think more people associate his name with golf still than a plane accident.
Apparently Nipsey wasn’t the smartest crayon on the tree.
“Sir? Excuse me, sir? I’m not dead yet.”
He was also in a sitcom with Henry Winkler and Ron Howard. (Of course I mean Arrested Development.)
I am going to nominate Selena Quintanilla-Pérez who was killed by one of her business associates back in 1995. I wasn’t a fan of Tejano music so I’d never heard of Selena even though I lived in Texas but she was certainly very popular among fans of the genre. It was her murder that really made her a national name though.
I will also go with Dale Earnhardt who died during a NASCAR race in 2001. The man was certainly well known among NASCAR fans but he became known to the rest of us following his accident.
It’s interesting how stuck we can get in believing that everyone shares our interests… I’ve done it myself on many an occasion.
I’m sure golf fans know about Stewart as a golfer first—but I think there are a lot more non-golf fans than golf fans, and Stewart isn’t someone who will register as a golfer among people who don’t follow golf. I could name maybe two current golfers (that’s if Phil Mikkelsen is still active), and I certainly wasn’t familiar with Stewart till the accident. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if more people knew Stewart as plane crash victim than as pretty decent golfer.
Natasha Richardson lived in my county and I’d seen her in a Broadway show, which were the only reasons I knew anything about her. (I’m not any more up on show business than I am on golfers.) A couple years after her death I was out skiing (xc) and fell and banged my head. I remembered what had happened to her and thought I’d better go to the ER. Trouble was, when I got there I couldn’t recall her name. I wondered if that was a sign of a concussion. “I keep thinking about that woman, the actress who lived here who fell and died in a skiing accident—“ I said upon arrival, and the intake nurse said “oh yes, the one who’s married to Liam Neesom…” After about four repetitions of this I decided that my inability to recall the name of the actress wasn’t indicative of any mental deficits, because all these medical people without head injuries couldn’t remember her name either…
Lou Gehrig was a great baseball player with a record that would stand for 56 years, but he wasn’t even the biggest celebrity on the Yankees. I’d bet than at least 50% of the people on this Board know more about Lou Gehrig’s Disease than Lou Gehrig’s consecutive games streak.
Eddie Fisher was a fading 50’s pop singer who a) dumped the wholesome Debbie Reynolds for the sultry Elizabeth Taylor and b) then was dumped by Taylor for Richard Burton in an even bigger scandal. Neither scandal seemed to alter his career arc (downhill) at all.