Hello Everyone Again,
My kids are watching some dribble on Nick TV and I just had a thought. When I was young and got my first job, bagging groceries, I was limited to something like 4 hours max a day, no more than 20 hours a week and I couldn’t work past 9pm. I was only 14 at the time and I remember it being a big deal when I turned 15 because I was able to work more hours and earn more. I was under the impression that this was State law (Florida).
If there are laws like this protecting children from working too much, how is it that child actors are able to get around this. I would assume that making a show like Hannah Montana, Waverly Place, Big Time Rush (can you tell I have kids?!) takes a bit more than 20 hours a week to do. I would also assume that they don’t attend traditional schools, but have private instruction.
I’m not sure how they do it nowadays, but in the past they used twins.
There are some pretty stringent rules regarding actors. My wife would know them, but I don’t recall exactly. They do vary by state.
Here one place to start: SAG-AFTRA | and a listing of each state’s links: SAG-AFTRA |
At a certain age, which varies by state, a child actor can petition the court to be emancipated and avoid child labor laws that way.
This is just a WAG, but it is also possible that some of the shows are recorded at a pace slower than “one episode per week” and that, by pulling together the chid actor’s scenes, their working times are also shortened. Maybe if they spend 6h on the set but it’s “2h recording, 2h with their tutor, 2h recording” it only counts as 4h worked (and 2 of schooling).
The SAG Young Performers Handbook lays it all out. Some states, like California and New York, have specific laws that apply to minors in the entertainment industry; others don’t. In any event, SAG claims that their contract prevails in the event that state laws aren’t as strict. In addition to working hours and conditions, there is also the Coogan Law, which requires the actor’s parents to establish a specific kind of trust fund to hold at least 15% of the actor’s earnings until the age of 18. This is to keep parents and managers from squandering all of their kids’ money. (There are details about the Coogan Law in the handbook I linked to.)
That being said, California does not recognize homeschooling, so minor performers who have not yet graduated from high school are required to attend school. Students are allowed to miss 25 days per year for work. Again, the handbook has details.
Nava, it doesn’t work that way. Minors are only allowed to work so many hours per day, and they are to be on the set no more than so many hours per day, period. If a production violates that, they are in BIG doodoo with the state and the union, and the production can be shut down.
Since you’re allowed to work more hours the older you get, some shows and movies use actors who are older than their characters. Miranda Cosgrove, star of iCarly, is 18, and Selena Gomez of Wizards of Waverly Place is 19. Neither are considered minors anymore, and when their respective shows debuted, they were still old enough to work longer hours. They also use twins to play babies and very young children, before their looks really start to differentiate.
The reason why the union and state law in California and New York are so strict WRT young actors is because there is something of a history of very exploitative practices. Young actors were treated as commodities and as cash cows for their parents and managers, and this is probably part of the reason why so many child actors wound up with problems. They also ended up broke because their parents and/or managers squandered everything they earned, and when you’re talking about a star who is making several thousand dollars per episode, if not more, that’s a significant sum. So some former child (now adult) actors are stepping up to advocate for the next generations of actors. They remember what it was like for them, and they don’t want it to happen to anyone else.
But are the “hours allowed to work” and the “hours allowed to be on set” the same? If “hours allowed on set” =6 and “hours allowed to work” =4, my example works (once you disregard the tutor part).
I thought you meant that the clock restarts when the child takes a break for tutoring. That’s what I get when I post before coffee. 
Ah, sorry, I’d offer you a cuppa but our machine is refusing to work… that thing has been here so long it already has a Personality, and it evidently hates us!
Young actors often use umbrella schools that provide curriculum and grade the work, but do not require physical attendance at a building. One had a booth the last homeschooling conference I went to, since of course they offer services to regular homeschoolers too. Young actors can also use personal tutors, which counts.
It’s not quite accurate to say that CA does not recognize homeschooling. In CA, if you wish to homeschool independently, you simply register yourself as a very small private school. Legally speaking, that’s what you’re doing. Thousands of Californians homeschool that way (I did for years). There isn’t a separate way to register as a homeschooler with the state, that’s all.
Several actors do in fact homeschool their kids–though they usually go the tutor-hiring route. IIRC Will and Jada Smith were doing that, I don’t know if they still are. Mayim Bialik is getting quite well-known in the homeschooling world and recently wrote a neurobiology curriculum for middle-graders.
A neurobiology curriculum for middle-graders??? Homeschooled? Well, that’s swell, but they still have to have their homeschool prom in the church basement after religious ed class.