That’s actually a good point. You even hear big names doing voiceovers for commercials (Stewart himself, for one, and I recall Hugh Laurie doing a nasal spray voiceover not that long ago). And a lot of film and television stars do theatre not just for money but out of love for the stage and to keep their acting chops fresh.
Both Alanis Morissette and Christina Ricci had eating disorders. For Ricci, it was not quite “crashed and burned” but she came close.
For Morissette there was massive pressure after Jagged Little Pill; everyone asking “When are you going to do another album?” When her next album didn’t live up to the hype there was a bit of a backlash.
Not Melissa Gilbert, but Melissa Sue Anderson has stayed pretty grounded through her life.
Jonathan Taylor Thomas, though a bit smarmy, his ego has not led him to any risks to his physical or mental health.
No, I don’t think so. I’ll agree Panettiere has never had a big public scandal but from the gossip press it’s clear she likes partying pretty hard. If she keeps it up it’s only a matter of time before she’s at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Claire Danes – who made her on-screen debut at 11, years before playing a young victim on LAW AND ORDER way back in the Sorvino era, years before starring in MY SO-CALLED LIFE at 15 – seems to be pretty scandal-free (and Golden-Globe-laden).
Sarah Chalke, from KidZone to Roseanne to Scrubs and some movies and other stuff.
Michelle Trachtenberg did her first commercial at three years old, did some Nickelodeon stuff, and went on to Buffy and has since done pretty well.
Sarah Michelle Gellar was in a bunch of stuff as a kid: Funny Farm, some Burger King commercial,
Then All My Children - I think we know the rest of the story.
I mentioned Elijah Wood in the OP. He has been acting steadily since he was little and he is now in his 30s. He seems a bit quirky but well adjusted. I purposely left of Sean Astin because I was half remembering problems he had. Maybe it was just his screwed up family I was thinking of. Not on the list: his trainwreck mother Patty Duke.
Yes, American actors do have something of an ingrained idea that you can’t go “down a rung” - once you’re in a major film, you can’t do anything less; once you’ve done a blockbuster; you can’t aim any lower; once your salary is $5/10/20M a flick, you can’t take less. I don’t know if it’s exclusively British, but there is another entire breed of actor who will fill his or her days with all the work they can fit in, to their benefit, their immediate audience for any work and their entire base of admirers.
Which is the long way round to say that my admiration for Stewart is all the higher for having seen him in Pinter’s *The Caretaker *a few years back.
He WAS on Roseanne, actually. He played DJ’s “very boring friend” for several episodes, maybe a whole season? I think the character was named George, but I might be wrong about that.
I’m a bit surprised this thread has gone this long with out any mention of Scott Baio. He seems to have avoided any of the obvious pitfalls and continues to get work.
Have you seen the preview for her latest?
Stories We Tell
Cynthia Nixon seems to have turned out just fine.
Hold up the train. Patty Duke has bipolar disorder, a physical disease that was diagnosed and treated. Yes, her life was a trainwreck, but she straightened out and is now fine (except for still in denial about Sean’s paternity, what with DNA proving his father is Michael Tell, a man she still swears she never had sex with).
Please do not blame her for her actions during the trainwreck.
Thanks Sara for the correction! 
I never liked Roseanne. (If I wanted to hang out with a family like that, I would’ve hung out with my own family)
There’s also Laurence Fishburne: acting at age eleven in If You Give a Dance, You Gotta Pay the Band before doing soap-opera work at age twelve in One Life To Live and making his big-screen debut in Cornbread, Earl and Me at thirteen before lying about his age at fourteen to start work on Apocalypse Now.
So in his twenties, he was earning a Tony on Broadway; in his thirties, he started racking up Emmys on television; in his forties, he earned a Tony nomination and an Emmy nomination as Thurgood Marshall, which is a neat trick; the point is, I don’t see any personal-life trainwrecks; I just see a guy who wasn’t hurting for work before his Oscar nomination and hasn’t been hurting for it since.
Just because it was something out of her control causing the trainwreck doesn’t make it any less of a trainwreck.
He was on Galactica 1980, not Battlestar Galactica. Very different shows.
He’s currently a regular on Touch (Fox, Fridays at 9pm Eastern).
Unlike the rest of the child stars from Diff’rent Strokes, I don’t recall ever hearing about Danny Cooksey having any crash and burn stories. He seems to have moved into voice acting and music.
Anton Yelchin is, what, twenty-four now? No trainwrecks yet; he’s just a kid who was showing up for an episode of ER at ten, and at eleven he was on the big screen with Along Came A Spider, and at twelve with Hearts In Atlantis, and after spending his teen years working in some half-a-dozen other movies he suddenly found himself playing both young Kyle Reese and young Pavel Chekov by twenty.
It’s maybe too soon to say for sure, but it seems like he’s doing fine so far (and with a leading-man role in post-production as we speak).
Sadly, his daughter is kind of a tragic case - porn actress at 18.
How about Johnny Galecki (who played David Healey), better known as Dr Leonard Hofstadter on The Big Bang Theory? He’s been acting since the late 1980s and he seems to be doing OK. Admittedly he wasn’t really a child when Roseanne was on air, but by my reckoning he would have been 17 during his first series with the show in 1992.
Yes, I meant headline grabbing in a ‘high speed chase’ kind of way, rather than a ‘Emmy Nominees Announced’ way.
At ten, Mila Kunis did a little soap-opera work and auditioned for the lead in Make A Wish, Molly; she landed a supporting role, which she played at eleven – as well as acting on Baywatch and The John Larroquette Show. At twelve, she was earning paychecks with Piranha and Hudson Street and Unhappily Ever After; at thirteen, Santa With Muscles and Walker Texas Ranger and Nick Freno Licensed Teacher; at fourteen, Krippendorf’s Tribe and Gia and, apparently, the pilot for That '70s Show.
She’s coming up on thirty this year and seems to be doing fine, both personally and professionally.