The glitz and glamor of Hollywood isn’t always what it promises.
People are being chewed up and spat out by the cutthroat film industry, and that includes children as well as adults.
But some child stars make it on the other side…
Check out what 9 celebs had to say about what it was really like for them to be a child star in Hollywood.
McCurdy starred on the Nickelodeon TV show iCarly as a child, and in her book I’m Glad My Mom D**d, the actress opened up about her experiences as a child actress.
She said: “My mother abused me emotionally, physically and mentally in a way that will forever affect me. […] She wanted this. And I wanted her to have it.
I wanted her to be happy. But now that I have it, I realize she’s happy and I’m not. Her happiness came at the expense of mine. I feel robbed and taken advantage of.”
Beyoncé is one of the biggest stars in the world and she says being on stage as a kid was a good thing for her.
In an interview, she said: “I entered dance and singing competitions when I was seven years old. When I got on stage I felt safe. I was often the only black girl, and that’s when I realized I had to dance and sing twice as hard. I had to have stage presence, wit and charm if I wanted to win.”
Radcliffe rose to fame as a youngster for his roles in the blockbuster Harry Potter films… but his success came at a price.
On Marc Maron’s popular WTF podcast, Radcliffe spoke about how he turned to alcohol to cope with real life when he was away from set.
He said: “There was definitely a time when I got out of ‘Potter’ and into the real world, suddenly I was in a world where I won’t have that consistency anymore.
I won’t see all these people every year. I won’t have my friends around me all the time. […] I drank a lot, but it had more to do with going out in public and struggling inside to say, ‘No, I can live a perfectly normal life.'”
Drew Barrymore is one of the most famous child actors who struggled and ended up turning his life around and having a successful adult career.
Barrymore said of her tough journey: “To have such a big career at such a young age, then nothing for years – people leave, you’re an unemployed disaster – that’s a tough journey when you’re 14 have access to so many things, then to nothing.”
Carter followed in his older brother Nick’s footsteps and became a famous singer at a young age. In fact, his first album came out when he was only 9 years old.
But Carter struggled a lot in the years after his initial success and blames his parents for how they managed his finances.
Carter told Oprah Winfrey, “I made over $200 million in my career before I even turned 18. We had this huge site with about 12 houses on it. It was worth over $10 million and I paid a lot of that money.
I had done a lot of stuff like this and I never got any of those returns or anything like that back. Even at this point, I’ve never owned a house of my own. There was a lot of neglect on the part of my parents. You didn’t do a lot of things right.”
Cyrus is the daughter of country music singer Billy Ray Cyrus, and she became a star in her own right when she starred on the TV show Hannah Montana.
She said she found it difficult to balance her life when she was young: “What was difficult for me was balancing everything. I think it got harder when I started touring as both Hannah Montana and myself. […] I think that’s probably what’s a little wrong with me now.
I see that as extreme damage to my psyche as an adult. […] America feels like my aunt. “You know you’ve grown so much and we don’t want to see you grow up!”
Macaulay Culkin, another of the most famous child actors of all time, became a huge movie star when he was released in Home Alone at just 10 years old.
Culkin opened up about Marc Maron’s WTF podcast about his domineering father, who he claims used to say, “Do good or I’ll hit you.”
Culkin also said, “After I did Richie Rich in ’93 or ’94, my dad and mom quit, which is one of the best things that ever happened to me. I was able to leave the store.
I could say, ‘I hope you’ve earned all your money because I’m not making any more.’ “He was a bad man. He was aggressive. Physically and mentally. He was just a bad guy. A nasty, aggressive man. It was a piece of work.”
Actress Ariel Winter rose to fame for her role on Modern Family and literally grew up in front of TV audiences.
But it wasn’t easy. Winter said: “In the first season I was very skinny, no boobs, no hips. The next year I had huge boobs and a butt. It was automatically ‘You’re a fat asshole.’ ,You’re an asshole.'”
One of Modern Family’s co-creators, Steven Levitan, said Winter’s mother’s behavior was detrimental to her daughter: “I ordered some lunches on my behalf for Ariel to eat one of them. I could tell she was hungry.
Boiled chicken and pickles are not enough for a growing child. Her mother kept her away from those ridiculous parties late into the night. She was 12 and 13 years old and had to be on set at 6:30, 7.”
Reyes appeared in the hit film School of Rock as a teenager, and the actress said the years following her role in the popular film were very tough: “From the age of 14 I used drugs, alcohol, shit, food and self-harm to do all of these to numb pain. I’ve survived dozens of toxic relationships and three suicide attempts.
I’m not saying this is all because I played bass in a movie as a kid, but because for over a decade I feared I’d peaked at 10.”
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