I was watching “Auntie Mame” this weekend (I want Roz Russell’s wardrobe - especially that gold sari get-up & the bronze sequined trousers with the overskirt…but I digress).
Anyhoo - the kid actor who played Patrick Dennis as a child - Jan Handzlik - received glowing reviews & apparently originated the role on Broadway. He has only two other imdB credits (including the “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street” episode of “The Twilight Zone”). He is now a rather respected attorney & has been for a number of years.
Any other examples? The thread about Prader-Willi syndrome & Mayim Bialik would be another example.
Most child actors don’t grow gracefully (or with any degree of talent) into adult roles. There are a few, to be sure, but most of them get regular ol’ jobs and hopefully invested the dough they made as kids. There was a whole thing on child stars over the holiday weekend. Keeee-rist. Some of those stories are so tragic, and some of them had parents who used their heads for something besides a hat rack and built freekin’ empires for the kids.
And thank God for that. Great show, but that kid just couldn’t act – he shouted every one of his lines. And his rendition of “The Little Drummer Boy” on the Christmas special? Yeesh.
When the new “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” came out, there were a couple of articles about the guy who played Charlie in the original. I heard an interview with him on NPR; I don’t think he ever acted again; he’s a veterinarean now (?), and doesn’t really tell anyone about his acting days.
Arg. There’s a website out there somewhere that lists a lot of celebs and what they’re up to now. Fascinating if guilty reading. I can’t remember the URL or find it, or I’d add it to this post.
Huh? I thought that movie started with someone breaking the news to Ripley that they’d found a dead-weight, annoying kid with a big gaping chest cavity, and there was a tacit agreement never to speak of it again.
The original “Willie Wonka” kid.
“Corey Baker” from “Julia.”
Lu Ann Haslam from “The New Adventures of Huck Finn.”
“Angela Powell” from “The New Dick van Dyke Show”
It’s not always (or primarily) because they failed somehow. A lot of kids get bored by acting. My daughter did, and her friend (who played Bette Midler’s son in First Wives Club) did also. I knew lots of kids who would rather direct.
There is also a gap from around 15 to 18 when a kid is still a kid and under strict union rules, but where the roles can be played by someone over 18 who looks young, can work 8 or more hour days, and doesn’t need a tutor. Unless you are a name, roles are real hard to get during this period. Then, you’d have to either decide not to go to college or start again when you’ve finished, and that is a risk.
Anyone who thinks making a TV show is exciting has never been on a set.
Word to this. My next-door neighbour (also my brother’s best friend) is an actor, and he’s going through this phase right now. He’s doing really well in school, so it’s a toss-up whether he’ll go for acting or university later on.
Max Pomeranc, who got glowing reviews for his debut in Searching for Bobby Fisher, quit acting two years later.
Mason Reese, the “so ugly he’s cute” kid, was on everything in the 1970s but now he just appears in “Whatever happened to Mason Reese?” projects.
I started to say that Danielle Spencer (Dee “I’m tellin’ Mamaaaaaaaaa!”) Thomas from What’s Happenin’!" and its lamentable sequel [in which she only did a couple of episodes]) left acting and became a veterinarian. However she has some recent credits, always playing a veterinarian. (I sure don’t remember her from As Good as it Gets.) She seems particularly well adjusted for a former child star on interview shows.
One of my former students, a sweet if somewhat stupid kid, was a child actor who has a long list of credits on imdb. He was never “big”, but between commercials and minor roles in TV movies he earned more than $250k before he was 13. It was all gone by the time he started college because his official residence was Atlanta and Georgia has lax child earning laws- his parents not only spent it but spent it so stupidly they were living in a mobile home outside of Atlanta with no money in the bank for his college. He’s a theater major of course.
Zach LaVoy, who was the youngest of Steve Martin’s kids in Parenthood (the one who ate the dots) went on to do the TV series, an episode of Who’s the Boss? and work at Best Buy.