31 Former Child Actors Who Survived The Toxic World Of Hollywood And Are Doing Really Well For Themselves Now
1. Hilary Duff — "Hilary isn't as big as she used to be back when she was a teenager and was considered one of the biggest stars in film, shows, and music in the 2000s! But she is living a pretty healthy lifestyle, raising her family of four children, and balancing her acting career in projects that are less mainstream along with getting involved in entrepreneurship!"
2. Ron Howard — "I feel like he was extremely lucky. He worked in two of the rarest situations possible in the entertainment industry with genuinely lovely people. Andy Griffith and Don Knotts were supposed to be really nice people (sometimes not to the other actors but always to Ron, by his account). The same with the entire cast of Happy Days, with Henry Winkler being known as one of Hollywood's 'good guys.'"
3. Dakota Fanning — "I remember there were pictures of Dakota and her sister, Elle, in school activities like homecoming games. I think their parents tried to give them a normal life between their careers, which is so awesome."
4. Elle Fanning — "I think both the Fanning sisters have done great for themselves."
5. Shirley Temple — "Until she died (at age 85), Shirley Temple Black was the paradigm of the child actor doing well as an adult."
—
"She was the US Ambassador to Ghana. She married a man who had never seen her movies, to which she credited their happy relationship. (She married at 18 to get away from her very controlling parents, and that husband was wild. But she divorced him, left acting, and was very happy from then on.)"
— Teckelvik
"Her second husband, the love of her life, said what he most admired about her was she was always herself. She never tried to be anything less."
— Erroneously_Anointed
6. Kenan Thompson — "I'm more amazed he hasn't broken down as an adult doing SNL as long as he has. All you ever hear is how much of a pressure cooker that show is. To last as long as he has, you gotta have your head on straight."
7. Jodie Foster — "She really survived Hollywood's perverted grossness."
8. Joseph Gordon-Levitt — "I haven't seen him in too much the past few years for some reason, but he was a child actor then went on to do Brick, Inception, The Dark Knight Rises, Looper, etc."
9. Elijah Wood — "No matter how bad the politics get in America he still posts about rad shit he likes on social media."
— Wendigo_1910
"He tweeted about my friend's band a few years back, which was strange. They're not particularly famous. Just a noisy, northern English alt/punk band. But it seems Elijah is a fan."
— ScottMarshall2409
10. Macaulay Culkin — "He went through a rough patch, but he's doing really well now. And he's still able to live off of that Home Alone money for life."
11. Brenda Song — "Macaulay and Brenda both did good for themselves. So add her in, too."
12. Kieran Culkin — "He's in good shape as well!"
13. Lindsay Lohan — "I mean, yes, she had a huge fallout and got herself in trouble with the law, but she turned her life around and is doing a lot better. She got married, has a child, and will be in Freaky Friday 2."
— NDeceptikonn
"I have never actually been proud of a celebrity. I don't know them and have no personal relationship, etc. But I am actually legit proud and happy for Lindsay Lohan. I think it is a combination of watching her grow up and getting a glimpse of her vulnerable human side on the David Letterman show years ago (not cool on his part). I am rooting for her."
— pepperw2
14. Jason Bateman — "He is great in everything."
— Chaotic424242
"It's ironic, he was the yang to Michael J Fox's yin, and I hated his character as a kid; I despised having to sit through The Hogan Family because of him; now that I'm an adult, he is hands down one of my favorite actors."
— shake-dog-shake
15. Kurt Russell — "It's hard to believe just how long he's been around for. Active in seven decades!"
16. Daniel Radcliffe — "He had a period of really struggling with alcoholism, but otherwise, he's doing much better now."
— allthingskerri
"Honestly? A few years of alcoholism without any scandals, coming out the other side okay, and doing interesting projects fits the bill."
— EchoesofIllyri
17. Ryan Gosling — "I live not too far from where his parents are, and one day, in an aimless Facebook scroll, I ended up on his dad's page, which was weirdly fascinating. And yes, I know it makes me a bit of a creep, but I couldn't help but click through a bit. The most boring-dad stuff you could ever hope to see. Like, here's an awkward photo of my adult children home for Christmas, except one is a movie star. I have to wonder if the shocking normalcy of his family life kept him on a good path."
18. Melissa Joan Hart — "She was the first person that came to mind."
19. Jerry O'Connell — "He was so adorable in Stand By Me. Seems like he has a good head on his shoulders."
20. Ke Huy Quan — "He seems like he is doing well. He played Short-Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and he recently won an Oscar."
— Coffee_achiever_guy
"I love his comeback! He struggled with his acting career for years, and it started to launch following his Oscar win! I hope he's able to maintain the success rate it's currently at."
— phantom_avenger
21. Scarlett Johansson — "A couple of pieces of trivia I'd tell my cousins is she was a supporting cast in Home Alone 3, and she starred with Robert Redford in The Horse Whisperer, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Avengers: Endgame."
22. Christina Applegate — "She has had such a rough life and has been such an inspiration. Every time I see her have a new diagnosis, I'm like, 'Come on! Give this woman a break.'"
23. Miranda Cosgrove — "She seems incredibly down to earth and normal, especially considering she had a stalker who set himself on fire in her driveway."
24. Wil Wheaton — "I love that guy, and he's the reason l asked Andy Serkis if we should just start using motion capture to phase out child actors, specifically using Wil as an example. He'd never thought of it before and said he'd give it some thought, which l thought was pretty cool."
25. Mayim Bialik — "She has a PhD in neuroscience, and as an adult, she was in one of the most successful sitcoms ever. She is now an acclaimed author."
26. Kirsten Dunst — "She has a fantastic acting resume, two kids, and a seemingly nice life with her husband. Good for her."
27. Dylan Sprouse — "Started a mead company and is seemingly very happy with his lovely partner."
28. Natalie Portman — "It's a miracle, too, considering how much of a weirdo Luc Besson is."
— HerbalCoast
29. Melanie Lynskey — "She's still in plenty of high-profile stuff like Yellowjackets and The Last of Us. I've also heard that she's pretty down to earth in person."
Miramax / courtesy Everett Collection, Elyse Jankowski/Variety via Getty Images
— Upbeat_Tension_8077
"I once heard Melanie Lynskey talk about her experience making Heavenly Creatures in an interview. She was picked out of tons of girls who auditioned. Cast with Kate Winslet. Everyone thought she was great in the role. She would talk about what she hoped to do next, and people were like, 'Oh, honey, that might not be in the cards for you. Don't get your hopes up.' She proved them wrong!"
— Comprehensive-Fun47
30. Bridgit Mendler — "Went to Harvard and MIT, co-founded a satellite data startup, adopted a kid she was fostering in addition to being an actress and singer. If you created a character with her achievements in a book or movie, people would call it unrealistic."
Craig Sjodin / © Disney Channel / Courtesy: Everett Collection, David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
— KweenindaNorf_7777
31. Finally, Leonardo DiCaprio — "The best example of all."
Darlene Hammond / Getty Images, Stefanie Keenan / Getty Images for LACMA
— Western-Image7125
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Yahoo
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The Discourse Is Broken
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Sydney Sweeney is inexplicably reclining and also buttoning up her jeans. She's wearing a jacket with nothing underneath. She's attempting to sell some denim to women, and appears to be writhing while doing so. In a breathy voice, the actor recites the following ad copy as the camera pans up her body: 'Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color.' When the camera lands on her eyes, which are blue, she says, 'My jeans are blue.' The commercial is for American Eagle. The whole thing is a lot. The jeans/genes play is a garden-variety dad pun. But when uttered by Sweeney—a blond, blue-eyed actor whose buxomness and comfort in her own skin seems to drive everyone just a little bit insane—it becomes something else. Sweeney does not speak much about her politics (for interested parties, there are potential clues, such as a 2020 tweet supporting Black Lives Matter and a mention of having conservative relatives), but this hasn't stopped the right wing from framing her as one of their own. Her mere appearance in a plunging neckline on Saturday Night Live led the right-wing blogger Richard Hanania to declare that 'wokeness is dead.' Meanwhile, speaking about the American Eagle ad in a TikTok post that's been liked more than 200,000 times, one influencer said, 'It's literally giving Nazi propaganda.' For some, the ad copy about parents and offspring sounded less like a dictionary entry and more like a 4chan post—either politically obtuse or outrightly nefarious. Across platforms, people expressed their frustration that 'Sydney Sweeney is advertising eugenics.' One of the posters offered context for their alarm, arguing that 'historic fascist regimes have weaponized the feminine ideal,' ultimately linking femininity to motherhood and reproduction. Another said that, in the current political climate, a fair-skinned white woman musing about passing down her traits is 'uncreative and unfunny.'(To further complicate matters, before the controversy, American Eagle announced that a butterfly insignia on the jeans represented domestic-violence awareness and that the company would donate 100 percent of profits from 'the Sydney Jean' to a nonprofit crisis text line.) Are you tired? I'm tired! The trajectory of all this is well rehearsed at this point. Progressive posters register their genuine outrage. Reactionaries respond in kind by cataloging that outrage and using it to portray their ideological opponents as hysterical, overreactive, and out of touch. Then savvy content creators glom on to the trending discourse and surf the algorithmic waves on TikTok, X, and every other platform. Yet another faction emerges: People who agree politically with those who are outraged about Sydney Sweeney but wish they would instead channel their anger toward actual Nazis. All the while, media outlets survey the landscape and attempt to round up these conversations into clickable content—search Google's 'News' tab for Sydney Sweeney, and you'll get the gist. (Even this article, which presents individual posts as evidence of broader outrage, unavoidably plays into the cycle.) Although the Sweeney controversy is predictable, it also shows how the internet has completely disordered political and cultural discourse. Even that word, discourse—a shorthand for the way that a particular topic gets put through the internet's meat grinder—is a misnomer, because none of the participants is really talking to the others. Instead, every participant—be they bloggers, randos on X, or people leaving Instagram comments—are issuing statements, not unlike public figures. Each of these statements becomes fodder for somebody else's statement. People are not quite talking past one another, but clearly nobody's listening to anyone else. Our information ecosystem collects these statements, stripping them of their original context while adding on the context of everything else that is happening in the world: political anxieties, cultural frustrations, fandoms, niche beefs between different posters, current events, celebrity gossip, beauty standards, rampant conspiracism. No post exists on an island. They are all surrounded and colored by an infinite array of other content targeted to the tastes of individual social-media users. What can start out as a legitimate grievance becomes something else altogether—an internet event, an attention spectacle. This is not a process for sense-making; it is a process for making people feel upset at scale. Unfortunately for us all, our institutions, politicians, influencers, celebrities, and corporations—virtually everyone with a smartphone—operate inside this ecosystem. It has changed the way people talk to and fight with one another, as well as the way jeans are marketed. Electoral politics, activism, getting people to stream your SoundCloud mixtape—all of it relies on attracting attention using online platforms. The Sweeney incident is useful because it allows us to see how all these competing interests overlap to create a self-perpetuating controversy. Did American Eagle know what it was doing when it made the Sweeney advertisement? The company hasn't addressed the controversy, but the ad—not unlike the famous and controversial Brooke Shields Calvin Klein campaign it appears to be playing off of—seems like it was perhaps meant to walk a line, to be just controversial enough to garner some attention. Casting Sweeney to begin with supports this theory. Her image has been co-opted by the right, accurately or not, in part because of where she's from (the Mountain West) and some of her hobbies (fixing cars). Even her figure has become a cultural stand-in for the idea, pushed by conservative commentators, that Americans should be free to love boobs. (Sweeney's cultural associations with conservatism have also been helped along by an Instagram post she made in 2022 featuring photos from a 'surprise hoedown' party for her mother's 60th birthday; online sleuths found separate photos depicting guests in MAGA-style hats and 'Blue Lives Matter' gear, which led to a backlash.) A marketing executive with enough awareness of Sweeney's image and the political and cultural conversation around her might have figured that an ad featuring her talking about her good jeans would draw eyeballs. This does not mean that some of the outrage isn't culturally significant. Those who have spoken out about the advertisement aren't doing so in a vacuum: Fears over eugenics creeping into mainstream culture are empirically grounded—just glance at some aspects of the very public and loud pronatalist movements, which have been supported by influential people such as Elon Musk. Proud eugenicists have found purchase in mainstream culture on platforms such as X. The Trump administration is making white-supremacist-coded posts on X and enacting cruel immigration policies, complete with military-style ICE raids and imprisonment in a makeshift gulag in the Florida swamps. That's the real context that the ad was dropped into. It makes sense that, as one commentator noted, the ad might feel like it is part of 'an unbridled cultural shift toward whiteness.' But all of this reality is stripped away by opportunists across the internet. The right-wing-media ecosystem is excellent at cherry-picking examples that look, to their audiences, like egregious examples of so-called snowflake behavior. MAGA influencers and Fox News prime-time segments feed off this type of content, which allows their audiences to feel morally superior. Very real concerns about the political direction of the country and the emboldening of bigots are reduced to: Democrats are triggered by cleavage. The right-wing-media apparatus has every incentive to go at the Sweeney stuff, as the MAGA coalition struggles to distract its base from Donald Trump's Epstein-files debacle. But it's not only the right that cherry-picks. In their rush to publish viral news stories explaining the controversy, the media credulously grab examples of supposed outrage—regardless of whether the accounts in question have tens of thousands of followers (and actual influence) or just a handful. One BuzzFeed story quoted an Instagram comment from a user who is not a public figure, just a person with 119 followers. This kind of amplification, where nonpublic figures become stand-ins for public opinion, is a dangerous game. It distorts the conversation, sending a flood of attention to posts from small accounts, often in the form of other users who pile on and excoriate the original poster. In turn, this leads to the otherwise inconsequential post taking on the appearance of relevance, causing more outrage. What ends up happening in these scenarios is that everyone gets very mad, in a way that allows for a touch of moral superiority and is also good for creating online content. The Sweeney ad, like any good piece of discourse, allows everyone to exploit a political and cultural moment for different ends. Some of it is well intentioned. Some of it is cynical. Almost all of it persists because there are deeper things going on that people actually want to fight about. The polarized discourse obscures the real possibility that the majority of people encountering this ad are uninvested, passive consumers. Rather than having any conviction at all about the entire affair, they're consuming this discourse the way that people consume sports content about player infighting in a locker room or the way that people read celebrity gossip. Perhaps this is why American Eagle hasn't issued a panicked statement about the ad or why its stock price, barring a small fluctuation, hasn't changed much. For some, the stakes are high; for others, this is content to be consumed in a moment of boredom. The internet loves Sweeney—not as one might love, say, a person, but as one might love an object, an atomic unit of content. Her image is fawned over but also analyzed, co-opted, and monetized. She is savvy enough to get a piece of this action too—hence selling her bathwater and these jeans. But the internet loving you, it should be said, is not often a good thing. Its desire is limitless. It ingests a person and slowly turns them into a trend, a main character, a thing that people struggle to speak normally about. Perhaps the impulse to label these predictable culture-war moments as discourse reflects a need to make all the anger and fighting mean something. Discourse suggests a process that feels productive, maybe even democratic. But there's nothing productive about the end result of our information environment. What we're consuming isn't discourse; it's algorithmic grist for the mills that power the platforms we've uploaded our conversations onto. The grist is made of all of our very real political and cultural anxieties, ground down until they start to feel meaningless. The only thing that matters is that the machine keeps running. The wheel keeps turning, leaving everybody feeling like they've won and lost at the same time. Article originally published at The Atlantic Solve the daily Crossword
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USA Today
5 hours ago
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Did 'Jeopardy!' champion lose on purpose? Scott Riccardi speaks out.
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