I have a number of worthy candidates, but i’ll start off with only a couple.
They can be from any era too, so if you want to slam Rob amd laurie Petrie’s little satan go right ahead. In fact, i’ll nominate Larry Matthews as Richie Petrie for major acting suckage.
The other two, the twins Sawyer and Sullivan Sweetin from Everybody Loves Raymond. They played Geoffrey and Michael Barone. I hated these two kids, and they haven’t aged well.
For one of the if not the best, i’m going with Ron Howard playing Opie on the Amdy Griffith Show.
When the Cosby Show first came out, I thought every kid on that show was great. Every one of them. Rudy was somehow cute as hell without being annoying; Vanessa was funny and natural, Ditto for Theo, Denise was exactly the kind of cool and edgy that my big sisters were and Sandra nailed her position perfectly too.
In the later years, this just changed. Rudy became totally self aware and annoying, Theo and Vanessa became really affected and their characters seemed egotistical, Denise and Sandra were able to keep their characters likable, but Theo, Rudy and Vanessa literally went from my favorite child actors to my all time *least *favorite in a span of a few years. And I hated little Olivia from the start. She was everything that Rudy never was as a little girl…Olivia acted like a grown up and didn’t have the natural talent that Rudy had to just be adorable naturally.
I really like the little girl who shows up in a lot of horror movies… but I can’t think of them specifically right now or what her name is. But she is literally like an adult trapped in a little girl’s body (she’s actually a mid to late teen now I think)… very awesome actress. She also did the voice acting for the little sisters in bioshock I believe.
The worst child actors are pretty much anyone on the disney channel.
In general, I have to say that today’s child actors are head and shoulders above those of yesteryear, when just being able to recite the lines seemed to be good enough. As an aside, I never liked Shirley Temple as a child star. Yes, I said it. *Way *too saccharine. Watching her curly little head sing “On the Good Ship Lollipop” makes me queasy the way eating too much cotton candy makes me queasy.
ETA: Although I agree with Stink Fish Pot. Ron Howard was perfect as Opie.
That guy is a fantastic bad-guy actor. I saw a pic of him that a random person uploaded to Imgur - “Ran into King Joffrey on campus - super nice guy”.
I loved Abigail Breslin in “Little Miss Sunshine”, she’s a great actor and seems well-grounded In Real Life.
I channel-surfed onto Hanna Montana once and it made my brain hurt. Miley Cyrus’ high-pitched, frantic, over-the-top expressions were just too much, and it seems like all the teenage actors in those Disney shows are the same way. I don’t know how teenagers can stand that type of acting.
Lily, in Modern Family. Mostly because of the very few, but oh so choice, words the brilliant writing team puts in her mouth. She beats her predecessor, who didn’t utter a single word (or just about), hands down.
And sorry, Alice. I think Manny is close to perfect. That must be a very smart kid, IRL.
The best child actor I can think of was Hayley Mills, the late John Mills’s daughter. Her debut in the thriller Tiger Bay was superb. She went on to be quite a sensation in the early '60s, in both the UK and the US. I first saw her in the original Parent Trap, playing the twins Sharon and Susan.
