Amanda Peterson, who shot to fame through her 1987 movie Can't Buy Me Love died from an overdose of morphine-based medications, according to Weld County Coroner's report.
The 43-year-old actress was found dead at her apartment in Colorado on July 5, and had stopped responding calls on July 3. Her post-mortem report released this week reveal that she died of respiratory failure caused by "morphine effect." Before her death, she took a combination of opiate and morphine-based drugs coupled with pain relief medicine gabapentin, anti-anxiety medication benzodiazepine, and an anti-psychotic phenothiazine.
The coroner's report indicated that Peterson was "naive to opiates."
However, the report also says that gabapentin in her blood was six time higher than normal therapeutic levels, even though she was prescribed the medicine for pain relief after hysterectomy. Peterson had additional prescriptions for heart and lung conditions, as she also suffered from sleep apnea, pneumonia and sinusitis.
She was not on prescription for morphine-based medications, but had also taken them a week before her death, after borrowing the drugs from a friend. She was on self-medication to alleviate pain, according to the report.
"This was not, in any way, a drug thing," Peterson's mother had told the ET online after her sudden demise.
Her father, while speaking to TMZ, had noted that "she had some illness and a sleep apnea problem that may have contributed."
Then 16-years-old Peterson, became famous with the film Can't Buy Me Love, opposite Patrick Dempsey, where she played a high school cheer leader Cindy Mancini. In the story, the "nerd" Dempsey gives her $1,000 to pretend being his girlfriend for a month.
In an interview to ET in 1988, Peterson shared her weariness about working in Hollywood.
"Hollywood especially tries - well, I don't know if it tries to or not -- but it cliches these teenagers and it's really bothersome.. After a while every guy is trying to lose his virginity and every girl is whatever and, you know, they're like party animals."
While promoting her movie Can't Buy Me Love back in 1987, Peterson had said she values life in Colorado in spite of staying put in Hollywood to work.
"I separate both of those lives also because I'm from Colorado, so I have two different lives basically.. Yes, it's true, you have to be popular in this business in order to get work ... That's called 'being well-known'.. But it's different when you separate that from life and work. Work is different, because you have to do it in essence."
Peterson could hardly find other roles as successful as Cindy Mancini. Her last onscreen appearance was 1994 fantasy film Wind Runner, after which she quit the world of cinematics. She also played a brief role in 1992 film Annie.
Her first marriage with Joseph Robert Skutvik ended in 1999, while she has two children Jonathan and Katie from her second marriage to David Hartley.
