Child actor turned 'Riverdale' star Cole Sprouse says he felt a 'constant pressure' to provide for his family

While audiences were marveling at how adorable Cole Sprouse and his twin brother, Dylan, were as little kids in Adam Sandler’s hit movie Big Daddy and the ABC sitcom Grace Under Fire, the young actors themselves were having less than a good time.

“Many of the jobs we were taking were the things that were keeping my small family afloat, so there was this constant pressure to secure jobs, which in turn were money,” Sprouse, who currently plays Jughead on the CW’s Riverdale, says in the March issue of GQ.

After a while he needed a break from sets, and so, like child stars Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Natalie Portman and many others before him, Sprouse went to college. He studied archaeology at New York University and began working as a photographer on the side, before returning to acting for his Riverdale role.

Sprouse made a mention of his rumored girlfriend, co-star Lili Reinhart, but he stayed mysterious for the most part.

“It’s not something that we hide, or it’s not something that we show off,” he tells the magazine of his much-speculated-about relationship with Reinhart. “It’s just something that exists.”

He’s not so private, though, that he never shares anything with his millions of followers: 9.4 million-plus on Twitter and a whopping 22.6 million on Instagram.

“I think social media and the Internet reward extremes,” he tells the magazine. “I’m a firm believer that a lot of that experimentation should be done in private. Ultimate privacy.”

His next big public moves include starring in new episodes of Riverdale, when the fan favorite’s third season returns Feb. 29, and the drama film Five Feet Apart, set to be released on March 15.

GQ‘s March issue hits newsstands Feb. 19.

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