16 Child Stars Whose Fame Was a Hidden Nightmare Behind the Scenes

Becoming famous at a very young age is usually overwhelming for celebrities, and for many child stars, their career in entertainment was chosen for them by their parents. Because of their youth, they can easily get taken advantage of. Many former child stars have shared how their parents took advantage of their fame and money or how powerful people in show business mistreated them. These are some celebrities who have spoken about it:

Warning: This post contains mentions of eating disorders and abuse.

Alyson Stoner wrote in an essay that at the age of 6, she had to audition for scenes depicting sexual violence and that it took an emotional toll on her.

She also stated that at 12 years old, she was overworked and chronically stressed, which led to her being malnourished and having eating disorders.

She added that many companies made her work more hours than are legal for a minor, that set conditions were inappropriate and hazardous, and that she also experienced sexual harassment.

Cole Sprouse spoke up about having trauma from childhood fame and how “every single person going through that trauma has a unique experience. When we talk about child stars going nuts, what we’re not actually talking about is how fame is trauma.”

He added that he and his brother Dylan Sprouse can’t even compare their experiences to the female child stars on Disney Channel because they “were so heavily sexualized from such an earlier age.”

Raven-Symoné opened up about how when she was a child, she was body-shamed for years and that people in the industry would tell her to watch her weight.

She also claimed she was not allowed to eat on the set of The Cosby Show: “I remember not being able to have the bagel or anything at — we would call it crafty, where it’s just a table of food, ready for you to eat whatever you want. And I remember people would be like, ‘You can’t eat that. You’re getting fat!’ I’m like, ‘I’m 7! I’m hungry!’”

Christy Carlson Romano revealed that her mother had tried to get all of her siblings into performing, but that she was the only one who had success with it. At 6 years old, she was already booking small roles on television.

Christy revealed she was devastated after landing the role in Even Stevens, because at the time, she was finally starting to have a normal life in her hometown of Connecticut, was dating a boy, and didn’t want to leave her family for Los Angeles. “I’ve never really unpacked how that must have felt, but I know that it was very traumatizing,” she said.

As an adult, she realized how little control she had over her childhood and now feels that parents should only seek out acting opportunities for their kids if it is organic to their dream.

Miley Cyrus has stated how the fame from starring on Hannah Montana probably caused her some serious psychological damage. She enjoyed acting and being on the series, but once she started to tour as the Hannah Montana persona, it became too much.

She explained how because she toured as Hannah in real life, people didn’t distinguish Miley Cyrus from Miley Stewart, the TV character, and it became harder for her to do so herself. She said, “I think that’s what’s probably a little wrong with me now. I mark that up to doing some extreme damage in my psyche as an adult person.”

When Taylor Momsen was asked to explain her “bad attitude” on the set of Gossip Girl, she answered that her parents signed her up with Ford Modeling when she was just 2 years old.

She said, “No 2-year-old wants to be working, but I had no choice. My whole life, I was in and out of school. I didn’t have friends. I was working constantly and I didn’t have a real life.”

In 1989, Gary Coleman sued his parents for misappropriating his multimillion-dollar fortune while he was working as a child actor on Diff’rent Strokes.

When he turned 18, he found his accounts basically empty, so then in 1989, he sued his parents and ex-manager. Gary was awarded $1.3 million, but after legal fees, bad investments, and medical bills for his lifelong kidney problems, he filed for bankruptcy in 1999.

By the time he died in 2010 at 42 years old, he had not spoken to his parents in about 20 years.

Brooke Shields’ mother was her manager at the start of her career, and she received a lot of backlash for letting 12-year-old Brooke play a child sex worker in Pretty Baby, which included a nude scene of her.

Brooke has expressed that she doesn’t regret doing the film, saying, “I was such a naïve, innocent child. I wasn’t Lolita. I didn’t have that precocious understanding of my sexuality.” She’s often defended her mother for letting her participate in the film. In 2014, she defended her mother, saying that she considered the movie mild for what’s acceptable in films now.

When Brooke went to Cannes Film Festival, the film caused an uproar, and someone trying to cut Brooke’s hair with scissors had to be restrained. She expressed how traumatic this was, saying, “I had never seen frenzy like that. It was so obscene but absurd. I couldn’t identify with it…the magnitude of the attention was really scary.”

She still has no regrets about doing the film. In 2018, when asked if she would let her daughters be in a movie like Pretty Baby, she said, “In this environment and with social media and with the dangers on that level and just being a mom now, looking at my 11-year-old, I would not facilitate it.”

Judy Garland’s mother made her start performing when she was only 2 years old. She sang and danced with her sisters before movie screenings at the local movie theater her father owned.

When Judy was 4, her mother moved the family to California. “From the day we arrived in Lancaster, all the wonderful carefree fun and joy in my family began to vanish,” Judy said. “Suddenly mother decided we had to be stars. She started to drag us to anyplace someone important might see us.”

By the time she was 7, she was performing with her siblings every night. “The only time I felt wanted when I was a kid was when I was performing,” she said.

Macaulay Culkin’s father Kit managed him during his childhood career. Macaulay has shared that his father was controlling and had him on a very busy filming schedule in the early ’90s. He added his father made him stay up every night to study the lines he would have to say the next day.

Macaulay asserted that his father was “such a crazy person” that he forced him to do SNL without cue cards when he hosted the show at 11 years old.