Former Child Stars Who Have Been Honest About The Downside Of Fame At A Young Age

The following article mentions eating disorders, mental health struggles, addiction, and child abuse.

In the "Miss Americana" documentary, arguably the biggest pop star in the world, Taylor Swift, offered her take on experiencing fame at a young age. "There's this thing people say about celebrities, that they're frozen at the age they got famous," Swift said (via BuzzFeed). "I had a lot of growing up to do, just to try and catch up to 29." If a singer who became famous at 16 years old feels like they're playing catchup, one can only imagine what child stars like Macaulay Culkin went through after becoming famous at age 10.

While it may look fun and exciting from the outside, child stardom is not always glitz and glamour. Time and time again, celebs who first entered the public consciousness long before they could legally drive have opened up about the challenges that can go hand-in-hand with becoming famous when you are a kid. From toxic family dynamics to mental health struggles to unbearable levels of pressure and expectation, there are a number of downsides that can come with being a child star. Just ask these former child stars.

In the 2010s, Demi Lovato transformed into a huge star. They were in Disney Channel movies, launched a successful music career, and starred on a hit Disney TV show — and long before that, they were on "Barney & Friends." "I noticed that when I came into the spotlight at a young age, and then was the breadwinner ... there wasn't a manual for my parents to read and it say, 'Here's what to do to raise a child star,'" said Lovato on "4D With Demi Lovato" in 2021. "They didn't get that." 

When the Disney star began paying the bills, the power dynamics in the Lovato household shifted. And so, Lovato began testing their parents' authority. "I had this like mantra that was like, if you're going to work me like an adult, I'm going to party like an adult," the Camp Rock star said on "Baby, This is KeKe Palmer" in 2026. "And I got into some bad stuff at a young age." At 19, they checked into rehab for struggles with addiction and disordered eating.

In their 2024 doc "Child Star," Lovato dug into the harsh behind-the-scenes reality of achieving fame as a kid. The singer has also pushed for stricter regulations on production companies to protect underage performers.  

From dancing alongside rapper Missy Elliott in music videos, to roles in "Cheaper by the Dozen" and Disney Channel projects like "Camp Rock," Alyson Stoner found success at a young age. In 2021, they penned an op-ed for People that detailed the downsides of fame as a child star, claiming they narrowly survived the so-called "toddler-to-trainwreck pipeline."

In the piece, Stoner recounted the exhausting schedule they were contractually obligated to endure, saying they were worked like a "machine," starting at the age of 12. "My body is medically undernourished and chronically stressed, which later will evolve into severe eating disorders, adrenal fatigue and mandatory bedrest," the star described. By 2011, Stoner checked into rehab, seeking help for an eating disorder. They quietly left Hollywood for a while, but resurfaced as an advocate for child stars and urged companies to be wary of stage parents. 

"The industry is a bubble, and from the outside, it makes itself the shiniest, most important object in the room," Stoner told People in 2019. "It took me a while to recognize the systems and how they're not really designed to put the child's wellbeing first." The actor-turned-activist released a book in 2025 titled "Semi Well Adjusted Despite Everything," and works as a mental health coordinator for Hollywood productions.

If there's one person who everyone can agree belongs on the Mount Rushmore of Disney Channel legends, it's Raven-Symoné. Long before she was the beloved psychic on "That's So Raven," she made her TV debut when she was 3 years old. "The Cosby Show" launched a career that has spanned more than three decades. Being in the public eye that long has come with plenty of accolades and scrutiny. In a 2022 interview with Business Insider, Raven-Symoné detailed just how long her image was hyper-controlled by the people around her. Her weight was often a topic amongst her team, even on the set of her own show. "It created a really thick skin on me," Raven-Symoné said of the body shaming. "I can't blame anybody, but I know that I would be careful of my verbiage to anyone, because I know what it feels like for somebody to be telling you hurtful comments." 

The "That's So Raven" actor eventually resorted to wearing two layers of shapewear while filming the show. What's more, she also felt like she had to hide her sexuality for years. Raven-Symoné knew the truth about her sexuality at the age of 12, but publicly came out in 2016. "Back then, I didn't have great role models of lesbians coming out with a positive response. People were fired, people were ostracized," she explained. "In my head, it was: You stay in your shell until you leave the industry when you're 45, 60 years old."

In 2022, Jenette McCurdy released her memoir, "I'm Glad My Mom Died," in which she recounted her experiences being raised by an abusive and controlling stage mom. According to McCurdy, her mother taught her to count calories before she went through puberty so she could look the part for younger roles. This was the beginning of McCurdy's years-long struggle with eating disorders.

When "iCarly" made McCurdy a Nickelodeon superstar, her mother was ecstatic. McCurdy didn't have an easy time with it. "I had been such an overprotected, sheltered kid, with quite a bit of social anxiety, and then to be recognized any time I walked out the door was overwhelming," she told The Guardian in 2022. "I grew to resent fame. It was my mom's wish for me, it was never the thing that I had set my sights on." As her fame grew, their relationship only worsened, with her mom now expressing jealousy of her success. 

What's more, McCurdy worked with Dan Schneider, the "iCarly" and "Sam & Cat" creator who has been accused of misconduct and toxic behavior, for years. Though she did not refer to him by name in her book, she did include a number of accusations about someone she called "The Creator." "My whole childhood and adolescence were very exploited," she tearfully said in a 2022 interview with The New York Times. "It still gives my nervous system a reaction to say it."

Cole Sprouse and his twin brother, Dylan Sprouse, got their start in showbiz when they were babies. In their tween years, they were the stars of the Disney Channel show "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody." According to Cole, they began acting at such a young age to support their family. "I think there's two types of kids within the child acting business," he explained on "Call Her Daddy" in 2023. "There's, like, the thespian children who choose to do it and then there's the working-class kids...in our case...it started, really, as a means to put bread on the table." In addition to bringing in money, Cole believes his mother had another motive. "I think it satisfied some sort of narcissism she probably had in order to be recognized as this sort of artistic success," he revealed on "The Diary of The CEO" in 2023. 

Looking back on what some of his Disney Channel peers went through, Cole recognizes how different his time as a tween star was from, say, Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato's time as a tween star. "The young women on the channel we were on were so heavily sexualized from such an earlier age than my brother and I that there's absolutely no way that we could compare our experiences," he told The New York Times in 2022. "And every single person going through that trauma has a unique experience."

"Home Alone" wasn't Macaulay Culkin's first role, but it was the role that made him one of the most famous child stars of all time. "I knew that what I was doing was different than other kids. For me, I didn't know how weird my life was until I got older and got away from it," he said on a 2025 episode of "Mythical Kitchen." He described fame as a bell you can't "un-ring," especially at a young age. "I wanted to go out and I wanted to date girls, and I wanted to hang out with people my own age. I wanted to, you know, go to a party. I wanted to do those kind of things," he said.  

Culkin's father managed his career, and according to the "Uncle Buck" actor, it was a toxic and abusive arrangement. Speaking with Deadline in 2025, Culkin explained he eventually lost his love for the craft due to being pushed to work too much by his father. "And when the time came around where I was saying, 'Hey, I need a break,' I wasn't being heard because it was a gravy train with biscuit wheels," he said. The star eventually broke free from his parents and legally sought to remove their access to his trust fund when he was just 16 years old. Today, Culkin is enjoying parenthood with wife Brenda Song.

When she turned 13, Drew Barrymore was already being used as a cautionary tale of child actors who go wrong. While the world might've been shocked that she went to rehab as a teen, Barrymore wasn't. As a child star who began working at 11 months old, she had a pretty unconventional upbringing. She told The Guardian in 2015 that she was a "party girl" by the time she was 8 years old. Her issues with addiction landed her in the hospital, a difficult time that taught her a valuable lesson. "Everyone has good moments and bad moments, but when I was 13, I truly lost everything. From my own doing," she said during a 2025 taping of her talk show (via People). "The most valuable lesson I've learned is that nothing is a given. Don't take anything for granted." 

When asked if she enjoyed being a child star, Barrymore told The Guardian she was unsure. However, what she didn't enjoy was going from lovable, in-demand child star to Hollywood outcast after her public battles with addiction. "To have such a big career at such a young age, then nothing for years – people going, you're an unemployable disaster — that's a tough trip to have by the time you're 14," she explained. "To have access to so many things, then to nothing." She ended up waiting tables for a while before making her way back to showbiz and kicking off a remarkable career comeback.

Brooke Shields was 11 years old when she filmed "Pretty Baby," the controversial 1978 movie in which she played a child who lived in a brothel. Two years later, there was "The Blue Lagoon," a controversial movie about two cousins who come of age while stranded on an island for a decade. "By the time 'Blue Lagoon' happened, it was 'Here we go again.' Everybody had such vehement reactions: positive, negative. It just seemed that everything I did was controversial," the star told The New Yorker. In her 2023 documentary, "Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields," the star said she was "amazed" she survived that time period (via Page Six). 

The same year "The Blue Lagoon" was released, Shields' legendary and controversial Calvin Klein ad hit the small screen. The attention she received for her looks was a lot to grapple with, and as she told Yahoo! Life in 2019, she dealt with body image issues for years. What's more, becoming a public figure at a young age impacted her sense of identity. In a 2021 interview with The Guardian, she said, "I don't think I became my own person until I got pregnant with my first kid."

And yet, Shields managed to eschew the darker paths many child stars end up on. "I talk about it a lot in therapy, but I think because I was so ... I had to keep my mother alive," she told The Guardian. Shields' career supported them entirely; her mother, who struggled with alcoholism, was her manager.

When she was 13 years old, Miley Cyrus began filming the first season of "Hannah Montana." The series not only made her a household name, but a real-life pop star. As life imitated art, she soon got to experience the downsides of fame. In a 2015 interview with Marie Claire, Cyrus compared being a child star to the TLC show "Toddlers and Tiaras." "From the time I was 11, it was, 'You're a pop star! That means you have to be blonde, and you have to have long hair, and you have to put on some glittery tight thing.' Meanwhile, I'm this fragile little girl playing a 16-year-old in a wig and a ton of makeup," she explained. 

The grueling Disney Channel schedule began to take a toll, and she suffered from exhaustion and anxiety attacks. "Every morning, I was getting coffee jammed down my throat to wake me up. I just had to keep going, be tough, be strong," she said, recalling 12-hour shoots. What's more, her career and personal life were under a microscope early on, and the scrutiny did not let up. "Now that I'm an adult, I realize how harshly I was judged. I was harshly judged as a child by adults and now, as an adult, I realize that I would never harshly judge a child," she told British Vogue in 2023.

Keke Palmer is a multi-hyphenate whose career began at 9 years old. Fans watched her grow from minor roles in "Barbershop 2: Back in Business," to recently leading in the blockbuster film "Nope." Since bursting on the scene as a child star, Palmer has never slowed down. However, as she revealed in a 2026 TED Talk, that hustler mentality came from a place of fear. "By the time I landed my own TV show, I was undoubtedly the breadwinner," she said, referring to the Nickelodeon show she was the star of beginning when she was 15 years old. "There was no time for outside activities, no time for vacation, no time for pause. As the pressure became greater, performing was the safest way to be free." 

That "survival mode" mentality stayed with her until she became a mother at 29. Despite her enormous success as a breakout star on Nickelodeon, Palmer now looks back at that time as a teen star with a different lens. "Being a kid entertainer on networks such as Disney and Nickelodeon, there's no machinery more dehumanizing than that, and I say 'dehumanizing' completely without sadness," Palmer explained to Variety in 2026. "It's just — you're a product."

Palmer described it as a sacrifice one makes in order to keep their family out of financial hardship. On a 2024 episode of "Club Shay Shay," she tearfully said that she wears the title of breadwinner of her family with honor. It's not surprising that Palmer feels that she's misunderstood as a child star.

Brandy burst onto the scene at just 15 years old with hits like "I Wanna Be Down," and she was the star of the hit TV show "Moesha." When she was 18, Brandy worked with Whitney Houston, as the first Black Cinderella. All of this success at an early age came at a huge sacrifice. "Yeah, I didn't have much of a childhood," she told Parade in 2026. 

Her record-breaking achievements not only made her a star, but a role model for young Black girls. For Brandy, that title of role model was just as heavy as a princess crown. "I struggled with being put in a box of perfection," she told People in 2020. "I felt like my mistakes would let down everyone if I made them." The pressure to be a role model was so intense that when the singer became pregnant with her daughter in 2001, she told the world that she and her then-partner were already married when, in fact, they were not.

When the relationship soured, the father's child revealed he and Brandy were never married. In 2014, Brandy apologized to Oprah Winfrey for not being honest about her relationship status. "At that time being pregnant out of wedlock was not a trend," she said. "It was not something that people praised...it was a sin...I felt like I could not be honest about that. I felt the pressure of having to be perfect."

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, eating disorders, mental health, or may be the victim of child abuse, please contact the resources below:

• Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
• Visit the National Eating Disorders Association website or contact NEDA's Live Helpline at 1-800-931-2237. You can also receive 24/7 Crisis Support via text (send NEDA to 741-741).
• Message the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.
• Call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.