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Former Child Star: Difference between revisions
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* ''Life With Mikey'' starred [[Family Ties|Michael J. Fox]] as a former child star turned talent agent.
** Although in his case it's even weirder, most of his fame came from him playing a child while he was an adult. These weren't roles he had played since he was a child, his entire carreer was simply ''[[Not Allowed to Grow Up]]''.
* Philip Seymour Hoffman's character in Along Came Polly plays with this trope, even featuring a movie poster in the style of The Breakfast Club, and a character meltdown when he tries to direct and play every role in a community theatre production.
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* [[Peter Sellers]]' 1958 comedy album ''The Best of Sellers'' has a song, "I'm So Ashamed", where a pop singer laments his falling out of favor, having not had a hit song in three weeks. It's revealed that the poor guy's almost 9 years old now...
* George Tirebiter from the ''[[Firesign Theatre]]'' album ''Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers''.
* Barenaked Ladies' song "New Kid On The Block" has a line about this: "I'm a New Kid on the Block/I'm 23 and they won't let me grow up."
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* The Broadway musical ''[[Avenue Q]]'' features Gary Coleman as a superintendent.
** And in the Mexico City production, the character was turned into a [[No Celebrities Were Harmed]] version of Carlos Espejel, a Mexican comedian who was a child actor in eighties' Mexican TV. Imagine a kid dressed up as Dracula, trying awfully hard to be scary and [[Hilarity Ensues|failing miserably, time after time...]]
* Baby Rose, from the original version of ''Babes in Arms'', moved to New York after she got older and "became passé". Now a gorgeous teenager, she's followed everywhere by a barbershop quartet who sing backup for her, but she has so little money left from her Hollywood days that, when the rest of the cast gets sent to a work farm, she and the quartet get sent there, too.
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== Western Animation ==
* ''[[Batman: The Animated Series|Batman the Animated Series]]'' had minor baddie "Baby" Dahl, a former starlet who wasn't able to find work as a serious after her show was cancelled because she's [[Older Than They Look|stuck in the body of a little girl]].
* One episode of ''[[Bonkers]]'' had a Former Child Star trying to pass himself off as [[Mickey Mouse]].
* ''[[Static Shock]]'' had a one-shot villain named Replay who was a former child star with [[Me's a Crowd|self-duplication]].
** And was also voiced by former child star [[Neil Patrick Harris]].
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* Jake Lloyd today seems to be very bitter and cynical about his role as Anakin Skywalker in ''[[The Phantom Menace]]'', but when you have gone through high-school and college with people [[Never Live It Down|constantly accusing]] you of ruining ''[[Star Wars]]'', it is pretty hard to not to.
* [[Michael Jackson]] was ultimately a bigger star as an adult solo act, but didn't completely subvert this trope. The abuse he suffered under [[Stage Mom|his dad's]] thumb as a child star warped him so badly that once he was able to stand on his own, he became obsessed with finally having a happy childhood in his private life. Thus, most of his adult pursuits and hobbies were juvenile and a way for him to "live as a kid" (i.e., the whole Neverland Ranch), and were a big reason he wound up with the [[Memetic Molester]] reputation that ruined his career.
* Brad Renfro was 12 when he made his film debut in the critically-acclaimed film ''The Client'', co-starring with Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones. He won ''The Hollywood Reporter'''s Young Star Award in 1995 went on to appear in ''Apt Pupil'' and ''[[Ghost World]]''. Sadly, he spiraled into drug and alcohol abuse and died from a heroin overdose at the age of 25.
* The three lead kid actors on ''[[Diff'rent Strokes]]'' -- Gary Coleman, Todd Bridges, and Dana Plato -- became infamous for brushes with the law as adults. Plato ultimately died at 34 of a drug overdose which was ruled a suicide. Gary Coleman, meanwhile, <s>[[Avenue Q|turned into a crossdressing woman and became the super for an apartment building somewhere in Upper Manhattan]]</s> [[Funny Aneurysm Moment|struggled to recover before tragically dying at 42 from head trauma]]. Bridges, meanwhile, is a regular on TruTV's ''The Smoking Gun Presents'', along with former ''Partridge Family'' cast member Danny Bonaduce, another example of a [[Former Child Star]] who fell into serious problems as an adult (both Bridges and Bonaduce appear to be getting their lives on track at this point).
* Played tragically straight with River Phoenix. He had a skill for acting far beyond anyone else in his generation, but couldn't cope with the pressures of fame and hated that he was part of a system he despised. in which he was the focus of attention that should have been devoted to causes such as Humanitarian or Animal Rights which he felt strongly about. He turned to drugs and wound up dying of an overdose.
** Averted with his brother Joaquin, who's got a pretty good career as an adult.
*** Although Joaquin played up to the trope with his extended breakdown in the fake-autobiographical ''I'm Still Here''.
* The rather sad case of Bobby Driscoll who was Disney's golden boy during the 1940s. Famous for his roles in ''Song Of The South'' and ''Peter Pan'' he was in several movies but was abruptly let go in the middle of the 1950s. He was ridiculed in school for being a child star and lapsed into obscurity through drugs. He was found dead and the body wasn't identified until a year later.
* Other than the [[Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen|Olsen Twins]] (who have also fallen out in recent times), just about all of the child/teenage actors who starred in ''[[Full House]]'' have fallen out of the limelight.
** Jodie Sweetin in particular stands out as an example of this trope played straight. Facing an inability to find further work and a traumatic social life due to being typecast as Stephanie Tanner, she became an alcoholic and a habitual user of marijuana, cocaine, LSD and most famously, meth. However, she seems to have gotten her life back on track recently, has published a memoir about her drug addiction, and is now seeking a [[Career Resurrection]].
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* The child cast of ''[[The Wonder Years]]'' have all managed to do well as adults: Fred Savage is a director and producer along with occasional acting, Danica McKellar is an author and mathematician when not acting, and Josh Saviano (Paul) is an attorney.
** Although Saviano has been the subject of the famous myth that he became Marilyn Manson when he grew up which he has found very amusing
* [[Christian Bale]]. He rose to fame as a child actor in films like ''[[Empire of the Sun (film)|Empire of the Sun]]'' and his [[Old Shame]] ''[[Newsies]]'', but truly came into his own in ''[[American Psycho]]'' and is now best known as [[Batman]] from ''[[The Dark Knight Saga]]'', and won a Best Supporting Actor [[Oscar]] for his work in ''[[The Fighter]]''.
* [[The Partridge Family|Danny Bonaduce]] has [[Adam Westing|made an entire ''career'']] out of being a washed-up ex-child-star.
** Averted, as he makes a point of stating that he would have turned into a drug-addicted [[Jerkass]] with or without his role on [[The Partridge Family]].
* [[Natalie Wood]]. Starred in [[Miracle on 34th Street]] aged 8, but successfully adapted to 'grown-up' parts in her teens with ''[[Rebel Without a Cause]]'' and ''[[The Searchers]]'' and is barely remembered as a child star at all.
* [[Natalie Portman]]. Her first big role was at the age of 11/12 in ''[[Léon: The Professional]]'', and she has been <s>equally</s> ''far'' more successful as an adult, starring in the [[Star Wars]] prequel films, ''[[V for Vendetta]]'', ''[[Black Swan]]'' (which won her an Oscar) and ''[[Thor (film)|Thor]]''. Like Emma Watson below, Portman's taking a career break to go to college (and [[Ivy League|Harvard]], [[Teen Genius|no less]]) may have had something to do with it. Like Christian Bale, she also won an Oscar, for Best Actress, for her role in ''[[Black Swan]]''.
* [[Kirsten Dunst]]. Her first big role was in ''Interview With The Vampire'' at 12 then [[Jumanji]] when she was 14, but she went on to a string of critically acclaimed as well as commercially successful roles in the ''[[Spider-Man]]'' films, ''[[Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind]]'', ''[[Marie Antoinette (film)|Marie Antoinette]]'', and ''[[Melancholia]]'', which won her the Best Actress award at the [[Cannes Film Festival]] in 2011.
* Speaking of Christmas movies, Peter Billingsley from ''[[A Christmas Story]]'' grew up to be a successful director and producer. [[Bishounen|And he's quite handsome,]] [http://images.buddytv.com/articles/movies/profiles/peter-billingsley.jpg too.]
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* Sean Astin transitioned fairly well from [[The Goonies|child actor]] to [[The Lord of the Rings (film)|adult actor]].
* [[Jennifer Connelly]] went a long way from being a young girl in ''[[Labyrinth]]'' to being the respectable adult actress she is today.
* Thomas Sangster, from such films as ''[[Love Actually]]'' and ''[[Nanny McPhee]]'', has had success beyond his cute little boy image, in films as diverse as ''Hitler: The Rise of Evil'' and ''Tristan & Isolde''. Sangster also played young Paul McCartney in ''[[Nowhere Boy]]''.
* Back in the 1910s, at the Vitagraph film studio, there was a local kid from Brooklyn named Harry Horowitz who enjoyed hanging out there. Harry was charming and [[Large Ham|a natural ham]], and the Vitagraph people began putting him in films, making him a child star. Young Harry would grow up to be one of the most violent and abusive men in the world: {{spoiler|Moe Howard of [[The Three Stooges]]. [[Mean Character, Nice Actor|But it's an aversion too.]]}}
* Stefan Brogren has come as close as anyone to being a [[Real Life]] version of SCTV's Rusty by playing the role of Archie "Snake" Simpson in every incarnation of the [[Degrassi]] franchise since 1987 while taking on an ever larger role behind the camera. His character, however, has aged and progressed from student to teacher to principal of the titular [[High School]], while the show's hiatus coincides with the period the character would've been getting his degree.
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