Speaking OutMillie Bobby Brown, Demi Lovato, Jennette McCurdy and More Celebs Get Real About Being Child Stars

Olivia Rodrigo

“You don’t realize how young you are when you’re young, being on sets, surrounded by 40-year-old guys, talking about the traffic and the weather, learning to make small talk like an adult,” Olivia shared with Vogue Magazine for their August 2023 cover.

“I remember being in meetings when I was 13 and they were asking me what I wanted my brand to be, and I was just like, ‘I don’t even know what I want to wear tomorrow.’”

Peyton List

“Being that age was a really good time to [be an actor] because there’s just so much unhinged confidence at that age,” Peyton told Teen Vogue in May 2023 of working on Disney’s Jessie at a young age. “We were in such a bubble on the sound stage. We didn’t realize [the popularity of the show] until we had our live tapings with our live studio audience, and we didn’t realize that people really knew us until we would step out into the outside world together, and then we’d be like, ‘Oh wow, the show must be doing well.’”

“I was best friends with every young actor, and I think [it was great that] all of us were going through it at the same time and having each other to lean on,” added the Disney Channel alum. “A few of us have very authentic, good parents, so to be able to come home to each other and have our sanity and our normalcy outside of [the attention of the show] really helps.”

Kiernan Shipka

Kiernan explained during an interview with Page Six in April 2023, that she didn’t realize how “intense” her acting was while she starred in Mad Men.

“I’m surprised because I wasn’t really thinking it was heavy duty at the time,” she said, explaining that she was too young to know what she was going. “I didn’t know anything else,” she shared. “That’s what I did. But looking back, I go, ‘Yeah, well, that was really intense.”

Austin Butler

“I am grateful I started young because it allowed me a lot of time to make mistakes,” Austin told People in February 2023. “I had so many years of really bad acting. And I still have so much to learn, but that’s what really excites me about acting is that you, it’s like anything, you can improve, and you can get better. It excites me to think about 10 years from now how I will have grown and how you can continually try to find more truth.”

ICYMI, Austin guest starred in multiple Disney Channel and Nickelodeon shows such as Hannah Montana, Wizards of Waverly Place, iCarly and Zoey 101.

Bradley Steven Perry

On his podcast, “Hit the Brake Pod,” Good Luck Charlie actor Bradley Steven Perry spoke about the unfair pay percentage that child actors receive, as 15 percent (usually) goes to the child star and 85 percent goes to their family.

“That’s a double-edged sword,” he began, “because if a family moves from buck-f—ck nowhere so that their child can act out here, and they uproot their lives and their jobs and their child is making money … I believe they’re entitled to some [money], but I don’t think they’re entitled to f–king 85 percent of that money.”

Keke Palmer

Keke spoke about feeling “trapped” while she starred in the Nickelodeon serie True Jackson, VP, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter from November 2022.

“I felt like I was walking around in a SpongeBob suit that I couldn’t take off,” she explained. “I was trapped. I couldn’t leave my room without someone coming up to me calling me True Jackson. What you are, to everyone, is just a character … just part of their experience.”

The Nickelodeon alum said that it took a while for her to get to the point where she could land a role like Jordan Peele‘s Nope, which she starred in in July 2022. “People don’t realize what it took to even get to the point where I could play that part [in Nope]. Nobody would have seen me playing that role if it hadn’t been for all the things that I’d done prior, so I’m proud of it for more reasons than one.”

Chloë Grace Moretz

Chloë Grace Moretz opened up about some of the more challenging aspects of growing up famous in a September 2022 interview with Hunger Magazine
“I was 18 and doing a red carpet. I walked off of it and I felt so much self-loathing and was really confused about the experience that just went down. I was really unwell after that. There was this complete jarring shift in my consciousness, I questioned who I was. What am I doing? Who am I? Why am I doing this? Like, what does this mean?” the actress recalled, noting that the first time she realized how famous she was, it hit her “like a ton of bricks.
She also opened up one particular moment on the internet that really effected her mental health. “There was one meme that really affected me, of me walking into a hotel with a pizza box in my hand. And this photo got manipulated into a character from Family Guy with the long legs and the short torso, and it was one of the most widespread memes at the time,” she explained.

“Everyone was making fun of my body and I brought it up with someone and they were like, ‘Oh, shut the f–k up, it’s funny.’ And I just remember sitting there and thinking, my body is being used as a joke and it’s something that I can’t change about who I am, and it is being posted all over Instagram. It was something so benign as walking into a hotel with leftovers. And to this day, when I see that meme, it’s something very hard for me to overcome.”

Miranda Cosgrove

“When I was younger, I would go through and kind of ignore all the nice comments and look for the one mean one,” Miranda explained of her experience as a young celebrity on a podcast episode of “Reign With Josh Smith” in September 2022. “I would be going through for awhile and be like, ‘Oh, found it!’”

“I feel like when I was younger, I didn’t think about it as much as I do now,” she said of being on the show. “Looking back, I think, ‘That seems like it would’ve been really hard.’ But when I was doing it, I wasn’t really thinking about it as much. I was more just kind of living my life.”

Demi Lovato

“In your teens, people who aren’t in the spotlight are still trying to figure themselves out,” Demi explained on Zane Lowe at Apple 1. “They’re going to parties. They’re making mistakes. And it’s like, if you’re a 15-year-old and you’re making mistakes, it’s magnified.”

Jennette McCurdy

Jennette McCurdy, who starred as Sam in Nickelodeon’s iCarly, opened up about her struggles with child acting in her book, “I’m Glad My Mom Died.” 
“No child is psychologically, emotionally, mentally equipped for the obstacles of child stardom,” she said. “Even if they have the greatest support system around them.”

Cole Sprouse

“To be quite honest, as I have now gone through a second big round of this fame game as an adult, I’ve noticed the same psychological effects that fame yields upon a group of young adults as I did when I was a child,” the actor told The New York Times in  April 2022. “I just think people have an easier time hiding it when they’re older.”

Liam Payne

“For us, we never got away with being awkward or annoying at points. It was kind of out there for everyone to see; the awful haircuts and we’re talking terrible clothes, it was all out there,” the singer told Glamour U.K. in April 2021. “I think I was a very serious child, one of those man-childs, I was a man in a child’s body pretty early on. And I think I would have avoided that stage, to be honest with you. To enter One Direction as that difficult, because it just meant that I got completely a different job to everybody else.”

Millie Bobby Brown

“The last few years haven’t been easy, I’ll admit that,” the Netflix star shared via Instagram on her 16th birthday. “There are moments I get frustrated from the inaccuracy, inappropriate comments, sexualization and unnecessary insults that ultimately have resulted in pain and insecurity for me. But not ever will I be defeated. I’ll continue doing what I love and spreading the message in order to make change.”

Miley Cyrus

“There’s so much I don’t remember about being a child entertainer because it was so much to keep in my brain,” Miley told Harper’s Bazaar in 2017. “It’s like anything when you are in it. I didn’t realize how much pressure I was under and how that shaped me until, like, this year.”

Selena Gomez

“I didn’t have an opportunity to figure out my life without people having an opinion every step of the way,” she told GQ in April 2016.

Demi Lovato

“Everybody was kind of growing up together. It was this really small group of kids and we really couldn’t relate to a lot of people, so we kind of stuck together,” the songstress told Billboard in May 2020. “We called it ‘Disney High’ because when there’s only a select few of you that can relate to one another, you start dating each other, you become friends with one another, you fall out with one another and then you break up with one another.”

Hilary Duff

“I don’t know how I would have ever prepared myself,” she told HelloGiggles about the success of Lizzie McGuire in July 2020. “I think I just had to let it all happen and deal with the positives and negatives as they came, you know?”

Zendaya

“Being a young Disney actor, that’s one level, being a young Black woman is one level, and then being very hard on myself is another level,” the star said during a June 2020 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s also just a personal fear. I want to do a good job, and sometimes that can cause you to be fearful of things.”