Words by: Caitlin Cefai
Artwork by: Jennifer Chen

Behind the glitz and glamour of million-dollar Calabasas mansions, court-side seats at Lakers’ games, and award shows with stars decked out in designer haute couture, exists an industry that actively employs children as young as infants without batting an eye.

Welcome to the glue trap that is child acting in Hollywood. Money-hungry parents throw their confident, charming and wide-eyed children into arguably one of the most lucrative and exploitative industries in the Western world—and those kids are too young to understand.

Children with a passion for performing are stripped of a regular suburban childhood out of the public eye, and instead become gold mines for greedy directors, multinational brands, and distant relatives who come out of the woodwork expecting a payday.

And it doesn’t stop at acting. These children are thrust into the world of fashion campaigns and modelling, attempted (and often failed) music careers, and complex networks of fake inter-studio relationships, while every moment is captured on camera.

The joy of the spotlight that comes with talk shows, social media virality, global press tours, and brand deals, quickly becomes tabloid news.

Substance abuse later in life as a result of the pressure placed on these children is not uncommon, and as the lines blur between what is PR and what is reality, the paparazzi are there to capture it all.
Yes, there are former child stars turned A-list celebrities with portfolios and bank accounts to make your eyes water. But, for every child star that took the world by storm, there exists one that haemorrhaged from the blunt force of global fame before they could even get their driver’s licence.

Take controversial beau Leonardo DiCaprio. With his soft eyes and sexy smile he is the ultimate celebrity superstar. Not only is he an Academy Award-winning actor with talent ranging from unforgettable dreamy romance roles in ‘Romeo + Juliet’ and ‘The Great Gatsby’ to iconic dramas like ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’—he is perhaps the loudest celebrity voice for climate change.

But, he had his start in acting in 1991 when he was just 17 years old. On the precipice of adulthood, DiCaprio was pulled into a tornado of million-dollar movie deals and heartthrob magazine covers. ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape’, and ‘The Basketball Diaries’ are just two of the films where DiCaprio was in his late teens and already being flaunted as “the next River Phoenix” (The New York Times, 1995). Alongside the dark post-mortem comparison, DiCaprio’s own parents said Leo was not going to stop until he became a star, telling journalist Jesse Green “we think he’s actually an alien, wired a different way than us”. While DiCaprio may have made it without too much scandal, the same cannot be said for his 90s child star counterpart, Macaulay Culkin. The actor of ‘Home Alone’ fame was thrust into one of the most ‘successful’ child acting careers of all time. However, he is not so often remembered for his roles in ‘Richie Rich’ and ‘My Girl’, but rather for the tragic events of his personal life that left a mark on his reputation.

Torn apart in a brutal custody battle during his teen years, Culkin quickly made the headlines when he removed his parents’ authority over his trust fund when he was still a teenager, sparking rumours of emancipation. Later arrested in Oklahoma for drug possession in 2004, he disappeared under the radar for the entire 2010s, appearing in the occasional paparazzi pic looking worse for wear.

Now in a relationship with fellow former child actress Brenda Song—yes, London Tipton from ‘The Suite Life’ franchise—Culkin has two children, and has not yet returned to the silver screen. In fact, his brother Kieran is now the family star, recently ending his five-year stint as a lead cast member of the Murdoch-family-inspired drama ‘Succession’. The difference between the brothers’ fame-aftermath is that Kieran isn’t 10 years old.

The same comparisons can be made between America’s sweetheart Hilary Duff, and party girl Lindsay Lohan. Both were former Disney Channel actresses with titular roles like Hallie and Annie Parker in ‘The Parent Trap’ and the title role in ‘Lizzie McGuire’. Lohan went on to face a tabloid frenzy after she was arrested for assault in 2007; found by police drunk and disorderly on the streets of New York City. Duff’s most controversial moment in the press was when she dyed her hair blue in 2021.

It begs the question, what about being a child star can so easily set you on the wrong path?

Consulting perhaps the three most famous child stars turned A-List celebrities, I turn your attention to the Disney Channel triad of Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus, and Demi Lovato.

Each played the lead in their own original series, each went on to have global superstardom music careers. Cyrus notoriously went full ‘good girl gone bad’ during her 2013 MTV performance of ‘Blurred Lines’, humping a foam finger while wearing a barely-there latex bodysuit. Not to mention her rollercoaster relationship with ‘Hunger Games’ star Liam Hemsworth, whom she divorced in 2020. Lovato on the other hand is most well known for her various stints in rehab; admitting in her documentary ‘Dancing With The Devil’ that she used hard drugs throughout her teens, right into the pandemic lockdown in 2020, before overdosing. Gomez is a mix of the two other women, having had her own stint in rehab, but her biggest tabloid story remains her legacy as Justin Bieber’s on-again-off- again ex-girlfriend.

Reporting on their childhoods spent in the spot- light, each cannot deny the pressure of long hours, global fame, and expectations that would even be considered overwhelming for an adult. In her series ‘Used To Be Young’, Cyrus detailed a working day as a child actor, explaining that she would fly-in-fly-out from LA in one day, spending the morning doing press runs in another state, before flying home to shoot episodes of ‘Hannah Montana’. Lovato labelled her childhood stardom as “traumatic” in an interview with Spin, while Gomez told People Magazine her experience was “beautiful but tragic”.

For some child stars, the problems came not from the pressures of work schedules or fame, but rather the way it corrupted their family life. Like Macaulay Culkin, Nickelodeon star Jennette McCurdy faced a family life that pushed her in and out of the industry. In her book ‘I’m Glad My Mom Died’, McCurdy detailed the emotional manipulation by her mother that led to an eating disorder, financial abuse, and an ultimate departure from the acting industry.

What can give us hope is that all these people are now doing well: Gomez runs her award-winning makeup company Rare Beauty, Lovato is rebirthing her hits as a rock album, Lohan has just welcomed her first child, McCurdy has taken up a career in writing and podcasting, Cyrus is on the heels of her eighth studio album release. But, the success of these former child stars does not negate the tragedies of being a full-blown celebrity at the age of 15.

When the curtain is pulled back on the money-making machine that is the child acting market, there is little room to feel confident that these children’s best interests are being kept at heart. In the age of nepo baby criticisms, we can at least have faith that children who are raised by parents in the entertainment industry will likely have better safe-guards in place than those up-and-comers who are thrown into the unknown.

All we can hope is that someone is thinking of the children.