13 Child Stars Who've Revealed How Hard Fame Was On Their Families, And The Sacrifices That Came With Their Early Success
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1.First, Ke Huy Quan acknowledged the sacrifices his parents made for him during his Oscars acceptance speech, and he has openly talked about them making the decision to emigrate from Vietnam in order to provide a better future for Ke and his brother. Later, Ke elaborated saying that although his parents were supportive of his childhood fame, when he stopped getting work he could "see them wanting something different" for him.
"My mom is a very superstitious person, so she would tell me to go see fortunetellers. They were Buddhist, so I would see my mom praying to Buddha to give me a career," Ke continued. "That’s why it was so painful for me — because there was nothing I could do to make someone put me in a movie or create a big role for me. And that’s one of the things that I hated about our business."
2.At age 10, Macaulay Culkin skyrocketed to fame thanks to Home Alone, but his newfound success was hard on his family. Kieran Culkin said that while their lives at home didn't change dramatically, paparazzi suddenly followed them everywhere, and their parents' divorce and the subsequent custody battle in 1995, were publicized everywhere.
Kieran revealed that he remembered writing a note to the court asking for press to be banned from the custody hearings, but it was denied. He said to this day he refuses to talk to Access Hollywood because, "they did a whole piece on my family in 1997," as well as the New York Post, which he says, "doesn't always give you the fucking facts."
3.Zendaya's parents put everything on hold for her to achieve her acting dreams. After she voiced wanting to become an actor, her dad quit his job so he could help drive her to auditions, while her mom stayed in Oakland and worked two jobs that "paid for all of [their] car trips back and forth for the year [she] was auditioning."
"Luckily I had parents who were like, 'You know what? We believe in you,'" Zendaya recalled. "I got my first job on the Disney Channel when I was 13, and it was just me and my dad in an apartment in downtown LA. It was very difficult because I was dealing with all the pivotal girl moments. I remember getting my period and him not knowing what to do. It was a weird transitional phase."
4.Christina Ricci has talked openly about how her level of fame as a child actor, especially after The Addams Family, was hard on her family. She's detailed her parents' divorce and how she no longer speaks to her father. In another interview, she added, "Some people deal better with fame than other people and some people have more supportive families than other people."
"I do think that having a 'famous child' is a weird pressure to put on a child," Christina continued. She's remained close with her mom and her eldest sister, who she has credited with helping her during a tough period right after she gained control of her earnings from being a child actor.
5.Millie Bobby Brown's family picked up and moved from the UK to the US early in her career while she was booking small roles in shows like Grey's Anatomy and Modern Family before she made it big with Stranger Things. Millie said her older sister ended up moving back to the UK because "she didn't want to do [America] anymore."
"It was tears, tears, tears. We went through tough times," Millie added. Millie's parents reportedly sold everything to make the move to the US, too. Eventually they returned to the UK and a few months later Millie landed Stranger Things.
6.Caleb McLaughlin recalled a moment between him and his parents after Stranger Things started when they were noticing that Caleb wasn't treated the same way as the other young actors on the show. "My parents had to be like: 'It’s a sad truth, but it’s because you're the Black child on the show,'" Caleb said. "Wow, that’s crazy. Because I was born with this beautiful chocolate skin I’m not loved?"
Caleb said the conversation came about after he and his family noticed he had the "least amount of followers" compared to the other young main cast members in Season 1, and people reacted strongly to his character being mean to Eleven. "My very first Comic-Con, some people didn’t stand in my line because I was Black," Caleb began. "Some people told me: 'Oh, I didn’t want to be in line because you were mean to Eleven,’ even now some people don’t follow me or don’t support me because I’m Black."
7.Jenna Ortega revealed that her mom would drive her to Los Angeles from the Coachella Valley "4 to 5 times a week" for auditions while she was still a full-time ER nurse and has five other children.
"It was like a six, seven hour roundtrip, LA and back, for auditions," Jenna said while explaining her early career before landing her breakout role on Disney Channel.
8.Alyson Stoner has talked at length about their experience with childhood fame overall, but when it comes to their family, they said they felt like they "didn't even know [their] siblings" because they "didn't really grow up in the same household."
Alyson said it felt like they were "separate islands," who were all just doing their own thing. They also explained that after their parents divorced when they were three years old, their mom married someone who was "financially able" to help "them explore the industry."
9.After booking roles in Goodbye World and Crash & Bernstein in 2013, Mckenna Grace's family made the tough decision to leave their home in Texas. At the exact same time, her dad was about to be accepted to a coveted residency program in Dallas. In order to keep their family together (and save money on flights back and forth), Mckenna said her dad applied to a residency in Ventura, CA, so they could all move together.
After Mckenna's work remained steady in LA, her mom ultimately set aside her job so she could be with her daughter at all times.
10.Christy Carlson Romano said that her mom "left her three siblings behind" when she accompanied Christy to LA to pursue acting in TV and movies when she was 16 years old. Christy elaborated, saying, "For a long time, I felt the impending-ness of, like, the sacrifice. If my mom's life didn't amount to this perfect version that maybe even she tried to insinuate she needed to have. There was a lot of guilt there and displacement from my family."
Christy continued, explaining how her relationships with her siblings are "truly less than" because of her becoming a child star. She also said that now she's a mother herself, she can't imagine doing what her mom did.
11.Demi Lovato revealed that her mom, Dianna De La Garza, struggled with the newfound fame and attention they were experiencing when Demi began starring on Disney Channel. In Dianna's memoir, she discussed how she was dealing with substance abuse and eating disorders during Demi's early fame. Ultimately, Demi being open with her struggles inspired Dianna to seek treatment in 2011.
"I think the woman that went into treatment when I finally did accept help, I think she was a really broken, tired, sick girl," Dianna explained. "And now our lives are so different. I mean, we're healthy, we're happy — all the things that we've been working on I think that that's the strong person I am today."
12.In an op-ed in 2016, Mara Wilson wrote about how her mom didn't like seeing Mara simply being used to play a cute child in Miracle on 34th Street. She explained, "I could sense her disappointment. They were making Susan as cute as possible, and taking away her intelligence and complexity. All through the last few months of Miracle and our publicity tour, my mother smiled whenever people told her I was cute, but I could sense she was forcing it: she didn’t care for cuteness, and her disapproval was contagious."
Mara recalled her mom wanting to know every choice writer John Hughes was making for her character in Miracle on 34th Street, writing, "As the months went on, my mother went from furtively asking, 'Are you sure?' to demanding to know why a change was being made. 'Why is she wearing a hair ribbon to bed?' 'Well, you know,' he would say. 'It’s cute.'"
13.And finally, Cole Sprouse has been candid about how his and his brother Dylan Sprouse's early fame strained their relationship with their mom, who pushed the boys into acting for financial reasons. Recently, he revealed he has no relationship with his mom, calling it "the greatest wound in [his] life."
Continuing the conversation on how Cole and Dylan were pushed into acting for financial reasons by their mom, Cole said, "I think she found a tremendous amount of self-identity through motherhood and tried to turn it into a profitable business at the same time, which for identical twin boys going into acting is [an] economic loophole — there are labor laws that can be incredibly profitable, so that’s what she did."
