OK, readers, throw yourself into this role: You’re a star. Everyone recognizes you. People ask for your autograph all the time. You get loads of fan mail and make tons of money. Maybe you even have your own action figure, CD, movie or a poster that other kids hang in their bedrooms.
Sounds like the life, right?
Trouble is, that kind of fame and good fortune seldom last. What happens when the attention dries up? And even while they’re hot, is the life of a child celebrity all it’s cracked up to be?
Paul Petersen knows the pitfalls kid actors face. As a star on “The Donna Reed Show” (1958-66), Petersen was a teen idol. But as he grew up, Petersen watched his own fame dwindle, while his child actor friends lost their money and self-esteem. Many got in trouble with drugs and the law.
“Twenty years down the road, we see the consequences: the substance abuse, the depression, the broken families, the suicide,” Petersen says.
Today, Petersen runs A Minor Consideration, a support group for young and grown child actors in Los Angeles. “It’s just crazy what happens to children” in show business, he says.
One huge problem is that kid actors are exempt from federal child-labor laws. That means children in movies or TV shows often work the kind of hours that would make adults droop.
“For example, Macaulay Culkin put in 18- and 19-hour days while working on `Uncle Buck,’ ” Petersen says. (Try imagining a school day that long.) When kids are cooped up like that, they’re often deprived a chance to make friends among their peers.
Another problem is that some parents bask in their child’s fame and live off the child’s earnings. Even if a child wants to get out of show business, Mom and Dad may push them to keep going.
“It’s harder when the kid is making a lot of money and the parent is getting recognition from it,” says Lisa Rapport, a psychology professor at Wayne State University in Detroit.
Rapport studied 74 former child actors, half of whom had been on the cover of Time or Life. One in four had abused drugs at some point; 41 percent had a history of alcohol abuse, the study found.
That may reflect the fact that child stars grow up in a pressure-filled, ultra-competitive environment. Everything they do and say is watched. “A talent for acting doesn’t come with a special talent for coping with public scrutiny,” Rapport says.
On the up side, she says, “Former child stars who had good relationships with their parents turned out well, regardless of how they did in their acting careers.”
A laid-back attitude helps too. Some celebs seem to grasp that there’s more to life than mugging for the camera. Take Frankie Muniz of “Malcolm in the Middle.” He recently told TV Guide: “I’m only gonna keep acting as long as it’s fun. Then maybe I’ll play pro golf.”
He added: “I know some kids who are on TV and stuff end up in trouble, but I’m not gonna be like that.”
TRAGIC TIMES THREE
The NBC sitcom “Diff’rent Strokes” (1978-86) made Todd Bridges, Gary Coleman and Dana Plato kid stars. But their adult lives were filled with tragedy:
Coleman, 32, was once worth more than $6 million. But medical problems and financial woes, including disputes with his handlers and his adoptive parents, drained the money. Coleman, who filed for bankruptcy last year, works as a security guard in a California arcade.
Bridges, 34, turned to drugs after NBC canceled the show. A former cocaine addict, Bridges shot a drug dealer eight times in the head in 1989, but was acquitted of attempted murder (defense lawyer Johnnie Cochran argued self-defense). In a 1993 case, he was found guilty of drug and weapons charges.
Plato died of a drug overdose last May at age 34. Plato, who had struggled with alcohol and drug addiction since her teens, robbed a Las Vegas video store in 1991 and served five-years’ probation. In 1992, she got another five-years’ probation for forging prescriptions for Valium.
