Being a child star is a fate I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
Many probably think that having that amount of money at that age would change their life for the better, but the more child stars that come forward, the more it seems to simply throw a spanner right in the middle of their life.
One child star, who was the lead in E.T., has spoken recently about why he regretted the role and the major impact it had on his life.
Macaulay Culkin has spoken previously about the effect of becoming famous so young, saying: “I was 9-years-old and so, like, you know, you kind of have to look at it from that perspective.
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“You have no idea what's going on.”
Daniel Radcliffe said of the same thing: “I think if you can get a situation where you’re on film sets without necessarily [thinking] oh, this is gonna be a big deal in your life, that’s great.
“Film sets are wonderful places. I think a lot of the time it can be wonderful for kids.
“But it’s really the fame side of it that should be avoided at all costs.”
One of the only other films of the scale of Harry Potter and Home Alone to have been led by a child actor is E.T. The Extra Terrestrial .
Henry Thomas led the film as Elliot, alongside Drew Barrymore as Gertie.
The Spielberg classic follows a young boy who comes across an alien that has fallen to earth.
Elliot befriends the young alien and helps keep it safe from a government taskforce sent to take him away.
Henry was just nine when the film came out, and has spoken about how there have been ‘times [he] regretted being the kid in E.T’ in an interview with The Mirror.
“My world went completely crazy. I was that stupid kind of famous, where you can’t go anywhere.
“It was like that for the first six months after E.T. was in cinemas. I’d go out and get mobbed.
“I was a shy kid, and being approached by adults all the time just freaked me out.
“I was like a circus freak. But the only time I had to deal with it was when I left the house. So I stopped leaving the house. I became an 11-year-old hermit.”
Thomas also said, in an interview with The Guardian, that his family ‘weren’t equipped’ for it.
He said of his mother: “She was doing the best job that she knew how to do.
“My whole family weren’t really well equipped to deal with anything like that. And other than a few precautions, we didn’t change our lives that much.
“Consequently, we got a lot of weird visitors to our residence and things like that, phone calls.
“I still don’t think it’s a great way to grow up. It was exciting for me, I went to some strange locales and met some interesting people.
“But it was also very disruptive to my parents’ marriage. Our social life got weird.
“You get famous and suddenly every cousin that you never knew looks you up. People are strange, they do weird stuff.
“As a kid, that’s a lot to deal with. And when you’re an adult [too], but at least then you have all of the faculties, hopefully, to deal with fame.”
Topics: Macaulay Culkin, Daniel Radcliffe, Mental Health, Film, TV and Film
Michael Slavin