Most kids could benefit from therapy, but I’m sure child actors definitely would. But responsible parenting/guardianship is the most important piece of the puzzle here
It’s not even about being successful. You only get one childhood. There is no amount of guaranteed fame or fortune that would make me consider sacrificing their childhood for even a second. Being successful is probably the worst case scenario because it keeps you in the industry.
I know this is probably an unpopular opinion but I think a kid would be pretty lucky to be a child actor. They may miss out on certain aspects of their childhood but they’d also have the opportunity to experience things other kids wouldn’t. Sure some child actors walk away, or publicly crash out, but that’s part of life. Plenty of non-famous people crash out too. And I’d imagine it’s nice having the option of fame and fortune. It would be crazy to deny your kid that opportunity if it was presented to them.
The thing is taking your kid to auditions is very expensive and time-consuming. Film sets are not known for being kid-friendly and a lot of the characters can be rough at best and abusive at worst. It’s intensely competitive in a way that can be soul destroying for even well-adjusted adults. Some irresponsible film sets can also be loosey goosey with labour laws and educational requirements, meaning that a lot of professional child actors fall behind in their education. It’s also a life that’s filled with bad role models and temptations, which can lead young people astray if they aren’t well grounded at home. For a lot of these reasons, many child actors find it difficult to transition to regular careers after a child stardom. The wise and well adjusted ones who ended up becoming happy and successful typically took a break after high school. Emma Watson and Natalie Portman attended university. Kieran Culkin left the business for a few years. Mayim Bialik left and then came back after completing a PhD. Mara Wilson attended university, and essentially never returned in a substantial way to the film business.
this is a horrible take and awful advice for anyone raising a child. source: any behavioral health professional, clinician, or child psychologist. kids need to be able to express themselves freely, however they choose, without fear of approval, validity, or qualification, especially from someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
now, if you’re discussing “stage” parents, that’s something else entirely. however, blanket statements like this are rife with inaccuracy, promote an emotionally abusive lifestyle, and hinder potential towards a developmentally healthy living environment. if you fear your kid might want to be an actor, don’t have a kid.
you wouldn’t be the first to attack kids taking an interest to the arts, just recently this article popped up, highlighting the normalization of historic dissent towards art education.
the “problem” is not kids’ wanting to become actors. the problem is we don’t allow people freedom to express themselves as they choose, without expectation toward material gain or higher, artificially achieved, social status.
The issue isn't theater kids. It's kids working like adults in Hollywood, an industry where no one gaf about anything except money. Predators thrive, and even if one of them doesn't get your kid, making kids responsible for anyone else's paycheck is just a recipe for psychological disaster. Until basically the entire structure of Hollywood changes, it'll never be a good place for kids, period.
Also, families that are responsible and allow their children to act typically fall into two categories a) very wealthy parents who have the means to be able to take their young kids to auditions and the kids have a strong interest in acting b) parents of modest means of teens with a very strong interest in acting who have committed to not profiting off their children. Both types would have no problem in having their children stop acting if the children were no longer interested.
In the first category, you have actors like Emma Watson, and in the second you have actors like Zendaya and Mila Kunis
Yeah, putting a kid in the limelight at a young age in a famous movie/tv show with all the attention. Then the kid grows up and no one cares amymore about the part he used to play brcause the world moved on. It's tough enough on an adult.
Yeah and especially being naive and young and potentially skipping out on college and avoiding a backup plan under the assumption that acting jobs will always be there.
I could see myself doing something like that at that age if I’d spent 10 or more years acting up to that point.
Yeah, it's especially bad for those kids because of the long tail on producing the show. They've been locked in for so long and now that they're all adults, it turns out most of them aren't great actors. No shade to any of them, it's just not something that every child actor ages into.
It's Netflix's most popular and most marketable franchise by far, though, so hopefully those kids got residual deals that will keep them paid for the rest of their lives.
Right, at minimum they have the money which buys them time to pursue any level of education they could dream of. I just hope they have good guidance to make good decisions with that privilege.
I think I saw that he said no because he is in a graduate school. Good for him. He probably could have managed to take a semester off to film but it sounds like he’s just over it and focused.
I guess Netflix does residuals differently. This came from an interview with Tristan Spohn, and it apparently applies to all of the actors:
First, you take the actor's compensation - but this is capped at $5,000 - so it does not matter how much the actor actually made - for the purposes of this calculation, he or she made no more than $5,000. This is why Millie Bobby Brown and Tristan Spohn are both getting the same residuals.
Second, you use a multiplier - 1.5 for domestic viewers, and 0.9 for foreign viewers. (This means that the residual payment will be the sum of two payments - one for foreign viewership and one for domestic viewership).
Third, you multiply by a percentage that starts at 0.45 then falls every year thereafter.
So, how does this work?
Domestic: $5,000 cap on pay x 1.5 x 0.45 = $3,375.00
Foreign $5,000 cap on pay x 0.9 x .45 = $2,025.00
Total $5,400.00 (Sag Aftra, the union for actors, takes about 25% of this)
These are residuals we're talking about here. This means money that you get in perpetuity for as long as the show or movie or whatever keeps airing. It's a standard part of contracts in Hollywood for actors, even for tiny parts. They're checks that are issued annually, I believe.
Bobby Lee has mentioned on his podcasts before that his parents were on MadTV and his mom still gets residual checks (even though MadTV hasn't been on the air or rerunning on cable or anything for years).
There's also a bar in Studio City in Los Angeles called Residuals, named as such because character actors that lived in the neighborhood could use their residual checks there against their tab. For most roles and productions, they're so small that it doesn't amount to a lot.
While you're filming the show you are getting paid regularly. I've never been paid for acting, so I don't know the schedule but either weekly or monthly.
Got it. I was thinking of the SAG weekly or minimum pay and was thinking they were saying they all get paid minimum for their weekly or monthly work which didn’t make sense. But I think I had seen the minimum is much lower at like $2000ish.
That’s a nice amount either weekly or monthly. Basically covers your rent in LA. But I don’t get why it’s capped at all. Seems like it should be based on minutes appearing on screen or something but I’d guess that’s a nightmare to calculate.
As the other guy said, residuals are tied to a work's release so an actor working on season 2 will get residuals for season 1, for example. They're not really monthly though, the checks come sporadically. They’ll get a few at once, and then nothing for a while.
Spohn talks about getting batches that total around $200-400 which can cover several months of residuals. When you average it out after the fact, it comes to roughly $100-300 per month.
The amounts also go down every year. Early checks are bigger. Each year they decrease, so it isn’t stable or predictable income.
The same rules apply to the main cast. The difference is scale. Leads had much higher upfront pay so their residuals are higher, but they're still formula based. They're not tied to popularity, they're still paid sporadically, and they still decline every year although Spohn didn't elaborate on that.
At the high end, even main stars were probably topping out at tens of thousands per year, maybe $50,000 to $200,000 in a good early year, then less after that. Supporting actors are talking a few thousand total over time, not per year.
As for whether it's good pay, Kimiko Glenn from Orange Is the New Black said that after 44 episodes she got only $27.30 in foreign streaming residuals and several other cast members have said they were underpaid after the show became a big hit. So the residuals declining over time is a bit meh since Netflix can still continue to capitalize on stuff while the actors don't get much of that income. This is different from past residuals where reruns and syndication meant ongoing checks that were meant to reflect continued use of the work.
To be fair to Noah, he's the only one of the Stranger Things kids who went to college. He's a business major in UPenn. He's said before that he still wants to continue acting, but at least he has a backup if ever he chooses that acting isn't for him anymore. Personally it annoys me when people take him going to college as a sign that he's "jobless", but I think it's him being really smart about his future.
Oh that’s right. I had forgotten that despite living in the same neighborhood as Penn. Good for him. At minimum, he should be able to translate his prestigious business degree plus his connections into a good career behind the scenes of Hollywood if he wants to stick around.
Funny enough he is also one of the few with major role in his acting credit prior to Stranger Things.
He was Tom Hank's son in Bride of Spies. He was also Charlie Brown voice in the Charlie Brown movie.
Most of the others had small background roles or Gaten (Les Miserables), Caleb (Lion King), & Sadie (Annie) worked in theater before also getting some background roles. Sadie and Caleb were on Broadway while Gaten was part of the US national tour of Les Mis.
Idk dude. I think if you experienced losing everything you might have a different idea. You want everyone calling you by the name of a tv character you played when you were 12 when you open your door in the trailer park?
Yes, no one cares any more. It’s just like any job in the real world, but with money and prestige.
If you got a job selling fast food, you don’t hear about the terrible fast food industry abandoning you to fend for yourself as you spiral into homelessness from spending all of your money on drugs.
Self-control and moderation. Children privileged to work in the industry have heaps of laws and regulations to protect them. No one is entitled to a lifetime of protection and care because they appeared in a Nickelodeon tv show twenty years ago.
For sure, Demi Lovato, Jeannette McCurdy, Corey Feldman, Corey Haim, Amanda Bynes, etc are prime examples and have been very vocal about what they have faced.
And then there’s Leonardo DiCaprio, Ryan Gosling, Michael B Jordan, Anna Paquin, Regina King, Ethan Hawke, Neil Patrick Harris, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Scarlett Johansson, Christian Bale, Jodie Foster, Natalie Portman, Zendaya, Sabrina Carpenter, Elijah Wood, etc. who end up successful actors and seemingly healthy adults who no one refers to as child stars because they didn’t crash and burn. It’s confirmation bias.
I mean, a lot of the examples above did continue to have or still have decent careers into adulthood even if they’re not as prestigious. Having a good career now and more power for themselves doesn’t mean they didn’t have awful or traumatic experiences as well. But of course if someone chooses not to talk about it, we can never say for sure. But considering how common the stories are, I’d think most of them may have been exposed to things children shouldn’t necessarily be exposed to, even in a more indirect manner.
Kids (especially very young kids) aren’t typically part of professional sports teams along with adults are they? I feel like we’re talking about different things here.
Why would anyone ban kids from playing on their middle school basketball team or whatever?
They don’t call them professional teams but they compete on global stages. Who travel to compete; are on television and around adults. Essentially working and out of school a lot of the time. Look at the US gymnastics team and what they went through. Look at the boys from Donda Academy. Should no kids do gymnastics or basketball because of it?
A lot of them also have to attend camps away from their parents, out of state; when they’re truly excellent athletes. Look how many football and basketball players barely pass their courses and rarely attend class because they’re getting passed just to play. Then they get injured and have no careers or education or money. That’s ok?
I don’t know how you got to no kids being allowed to do sports from this. No, kids shouldn’t be in sports in a way that disrupts their lives. They should be able to play it recreationally if they choose to, just like kids into acting should be able to join theater clubs at their school or in their communities.
Just because they survived and seemingly came out okay doesn’t mean they didn’t struggle emotionally. Not everyone who needs therapy wound up dead or addicted to drugs.
Regular people also need therapy. There are more traumatized and drug addicted people from your hometown. That’s all I’m saying. A lot of the child stars who suffered had abusive and neglectful parents, they would’ve struggled outside of the spotlight too.
This is a red herring argument and not relevent to the topic at hand. The industry itself is abnormal for child development. Kids are working more than they are going to school and having normal social development with peers. There are plenty of parents dragging their kids to auditions constantly that never get famous but their childhood is being taken away to work so mommy and daddy don't have to.
Mentioning that plenty of "regular people" need therapy is not relevent to the discussion nor is it helpful. All you're doing is invalidating their experience and saying... what? That it's normal and they should shut up? That they were "lucky" because they made money and have no right to mention what they went through and how it fucked them up emotionally? Everyone knows that "regular people need therapy too". It's not relevent or helpful to use that fact to invalidate someone's experience in this manner.
Your list is folks who've had mental illness, addiction and eating disorders. But people who were never child stars have these issues too. I don't even think the child actors have a disproportionate prevalence of these things. Just from my high school year we have people who fit that profile too. Infact we even now have a jail bird convicted on violent robbery charges.
I think that these same stars issues get regurgitated in the press for years and years and so you internalize this idea that it's more common among child stars. Its just as common around you, you just aren't seeing what your old classmates are up to everytime you get on the internet.
I’m imagining a child actors union that fights for equality and safe treatment of child actors. Beyond therapy, they need a robust support system, and need to be protected from predatory interests. The outcome of this will be less glitzy and glamorous television shows and movies, but who cares about that anyways. American exceptionalism is overrated.
I’m not really sure, but I’m saying that the less you are able to abuse people to get them to perform the a certain standard, the less they will be able to meet any standard. It’s like in any job. You can abuse your workforce to get them to perform to a certain standard, but if that workforce has union protections, your standards will have to drop, or change, but your workforce will be protected.
iActually, in most cases, workers who aren’t taken advantage of produce higher quality outputs
The idea of brute-forcing quality and maximizing productivity for top notch quantity and quality is pretty ridiculous too, it’s very obvious that you have to strike a balance between the two and that the best things typically take more time/money/energy/etc.
But also with everything going on I’m kind of sick of celebrities talking about their struggles - sorry.
Especially seeing how many of em either cower away when they could use their voice or literally stand up and applaud when facism is in the room (look at u stallone)
Yes there’s an especially f you to someone like Stallone who will be gone in 20 years while we are all left with whatever America is and with all his travels and experience working with many different people… to think Trump is what’s good for people is just infuriating
Well reading back what I said I’m not really sure what led me to say that. Sort of discounting what he said as if becuase there’s other issues in the world he’s not allowed to have his
I think maybe I saw another celebrity talking about something in an ignorant way and I was just in a fuck celebrities headspace
This is where I fully support AI in film. If you must have a child or animal character then get your Sora on. If children enjoy acting, they should be doing school plays. Not working with adults.
Then you should think child athletes should be banned as well. High school and elementary kids who essentially work for their schools and are in the limelight and constantly on the road should be banned…
Acting, like sports, often yields the best results when you start young. The vast majority of successful actors all started as kids.
Acting for Hollywood and acting in their own high school or college are widely different. What you're arguing for is the latter, from where they go to the former. To use the professional sports comparison, you start at age level and/or B teams, but you don't get so much spotlight or stardom till you reach the main team.
OP is oversimplifying, but the gist is that people need to stop letting kids join the big professional stage without maturity (both emotional and physical) or proper care, as there's a good chance they'll crack under the expectations. Which happened both to Hollywood actors and athletes.
Yeah, i dont really care about that. I feel that it's unethical. Kids in sports is a different topic, and i dont think i know enough about it to comment. There is no reason children should be working for adults to profit off of.
Adults profit off children playing in sports. Anything a child does for money gain, makes the grown ups profit because children can't profit, legally.
Charlie Chaplin made his mark as a child performer. So did Mozart. Not sure why you have such a proclivity against under-16's doing work. Some under-16 year olds do their best work then. And get dull later. Taking a point with the small percentage that have bad parents, isn't indicative of the whole. What about Malaia, or Greta Thunberg, or Ronan Farrow who was a UNICEF spokesperson when he was 14?
A few under-16's have BAD PARENTS. That's what to focus on. Not under-16's doing stuff they think is fun.
The fact that they “do their best work” is subjective, and also misses the point. They deserve not to be forced to do work as kids, or have their labor exploited, even if that work is beneficial to adults because young people are perceived to do it well.
Yeah that's pretty much what history is told us since at least the '80s but I've only been alive since at least the 80s so it could have been going on for even longer. Every child star gets exploited and needs therapy it's been unknown thing in our society but nobody ever wants to talk about certain elephants in the room I give it up to Noah for actually trying to bring in a conversation in this modern era where we're supposed to have the means to an end to deal with these things but probably still don't
I don't think children should be actors. It's just not a good life for them in general. They should be allowed to be kids and not working at such a young age.
Of course it’s not normal. They are subjected to extreme child labor and given godly amounts of money. I think there’s plenty of proof out there that this combo makes for really fucked up people.
Humans were never meant to have this much attention focused on them, and for so long.
Fame is probably one of the most psychologically and spiritually dangerous things a human can attain.
The idea of it terrifies me. It would be so easy to get wrapped up in that world of flashing lights and red carpets, only to lose yourself as it all washes over you like a wave.
Why else do you think it is such a trope for famous people to burn out and crash?
Regular therapy appointments with a neutral third party should be a part of their defined benefits.
They need someone that is indifferent to their success as an actor, someone outside of the circle of adults that benefits from their success (agents, studios, parents, etc…).
I don’t know how the union landscape works in the entertainment industry, but they also need to be treated as a distinct bargaining unit within their union that has working conditions at its core.
Everyone needs therapy, kid. This is an abnormal world, filled with abnormal people and events — For everyone. At least you have copious amounts of money and are union for your troubles.
Most kids could benefit from therapy, but I’m sure child actors definitely would. But responsible parenting/guardianship is the most important piece of the puzzle here
Edit: don’t feed the trolls, lads
Exactly. Abnormal doesn’t always equal ‘bad,’ or ‘traumatic.’ Caring, engaged parents go a long, long way to determine long-term outcomes.
As sad as it is, having caring, engaged parents is pretty abnormal in a lot of places
Yeah its usually the parents we hear about pushing their kids towards acting for their own needs.
Its what the Caulkins' father did to them. He was a failed actor and then got all of his children into acting when they were young.
Britney Spears is another one who suffered a lot from her parents.
Yep that's right
The problem is responsible parents would never let their children become actors so it’s a self selecting population.
Right. And for every Noah Schnapp there are 10 kids who keep going to auditions and failing miserably.
It’s not even about being successful. You only get one childhood. There is no amount of guaranteed fame or fortune that would make me consider sacrificing their childhood for even a second. Being successful is probably the worst case scenario because it keeps you in the industry.
In this same sub: Macaulay Culkin on Why He Walked Away From Hollywood: “I Just Wanted to Be a Kid”
Case closed.
D.B. Caufield was a prostitiute.
I know this is probably an unpopular opinion but I think a kid would be pretty lucky to be a child actor. They may miss out on certain aspects of their childhood but they’d also have the opportunity to experience things other kids wouldn’t. Sure some child actors walk away, or publicly crash out, but that’s part of life. Plenty of non-famous people crash out too. And I’d imagine it’s nice having the option of fame and fortune. It would be crazy to deny your kid that opportunity if it was presented to them.
My kid is only five and asks me regularly how he can be “the kid in home alone”. Some kids just show an interest in these things.
The thing is taking your kid to auditions is very expensive and time-consuming. Film sets are not known for being kid-friendly and a lot of the characters can be rough at best and abusive at worst. It’s intensely competitive in a way that can be soul destroying for even well-adjusted adults. Some irresponsible film sets can also be loosey goosey with labour laws and educational requirements, meaning that a lot of professional child actors fall behind in their education. It’s also a life that’s filled with bad role models and temptations, which can lead young people astray if they aren’t well grounded at home. For a lot of these reasons, many child actors find it difficult to transition to regular careers after a child stardom. The wise and well adjusted ones who ended up becoming happy and successful typically took a break after high school. Emma Watson and Natalie Portman attended university. Kieran Culkin left the business for a few years. Mayim Bialik left and then came back after completing a PhD. Mara Wilson attended university, and essentially never returned in a substantial way to the film business.
Pretty sure that number is way higher.
this is a horrible take and awful advice for anyone raising a child. source: any behavioral health professional, clinician, or child psychologist. kids need to be able to express themselves freely, however they choose, without fear of approval, validity, or qualification, especially from someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
now, if you’re discussing “stage” parents, that’s something else entirely. however, blanket statements like this are rife with inaccuracy, promote an emotionally abusive lifestyle, and hinder potential towards a developmentally healthy living environment. if you fear your kid might want to be an actor, don’t have a kid.
you wouldn’t be the first to attack kids taking an interest to the arts, just recently this article popped up, highlighting the normalization of historic dissent towards art education.
the “problem” is not kids’ wanting to become actors. the problem is we don’t allow people freedom to express themselves as they choose, without expectation toward material gain or higher, artificially achieved, social status.
The issue isn't theater kids. It's kids working like adults in Hollywood, an industry where no one gaf about anything except money. Predators thrive, and even if one of them doesn't get your kid, making kids responsible for anyone else's paycheck is just a recipe for psychological disaster. Until basically the entire structure of Hollywood changes, it'll never be a good place for kids, period.
How does any of what you wrote relate to making your child work for a living?
Also, families that are responsible and allow their children to act typically fall into two categories a) very wealthy parents who have the means to be able to take their young kids to auditions and the kids have a strong interest in acting b) parents of modest means of teens with a very strong interest in acting who have committed to not profiting off their children. Both types would have no problem in having their children stop acting if the children were no longer interested.
In the first category, you have actors like Emma Watson, and in the second you have actors like Zendaya and Mila Kunis
Child actors parent have money bag eyes. No time for a thing else.
Not necessarily. Therapy is a luxury for a lot of average everyday families.
I didn’t say that it was affordable, I said it was something most kids could benefit from. Which I stand by.
What is the billing code in the DSM?
For therapy?
They can’t actually answer this, because they don’t know what the DSM is.
Well, maybe it shouldn't be.
Most people
Most kids don’t actually need therapy lol
they said most kids "could benefit" from therapy, not that they need it. id say thats true for everyone regardless of age
Not really, though.
yes, really.
Can you explain what most children need help with that would allow them to benefit from therapy?
talking through the emotions they are experiencing for the very first time?
Yeah, putting a kid in the limelight at a young age in a famous movie/tv show with all the attention. Then the kid grows up and no one cares amymore about the part he used to play brcause the world moved on. It's tough enough on an adult.
That must be brutal for a kid.
Yeah and especially being naive and young and potentially skipping out on college and avoiding a backup plan under the assumption that acting jobs will always be there.
I could see myself doing something like that at that age if I’d spent 10 or more years acting up to that point.
Yeah, it's especially bad for those kids because of the long tail on producing the show. They've been locked in for so long and now that they're all adults, it turns out most of them aren't great actors. No shade to any of them, it's just not something that every child actor ages into.
It's Netflix's most popular and most marketable franchise by far, though, so hopefully those kids got residual deals that will keep them paid for the rest of their lives.
Right, at minimum they have the money which buys them time to pursue any level of education they could dream of. I just hope they have good guidance to make good decisions with that privilege.
The kid who played Dewey on Malcom in the Middle couldn't do the revival that's coming soon because he's *still* getting an education! Good for him.
I think I saw that he said no because he is in a graduate school. Good for him. He probably could have managed to take a semester off to film but it sounds like he’s just over it and focused.
I forgot to mention the predatory parents.
I guess Netflix does residuals differently. This came from an interview with Tristan Spohn, and it apparently applies to all of the actors:
There's a video on this page: https://strangerthings.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003763122
Is this $5000 per week or month while filming?
These are residuals we're talking about here. This means money that you get in perpetuity for as long as the show or movie or whatever keeps airing. It's a standard part of contracts in Hollywood for actors, even for tiny parts. They're checks that are issued annually, I believe.
Bobby Lee has mentioned on his podcasts before that his parents were on MadTV and his mom still gets residual checks (even though MadTV hasn't been on the air or rerunning on cable or anything for years).
There's also a bar in Studio City in Los Angeles called Residuals, named as such because character actors that lived in the neighborhood could use their residual checks there against their tab. For most roles and productions, they're so small that it doesn't amount to a lot.
Got it. I think of compensation more as the pay they make for filming and residuals as a bonus.
Is $5000 lifetime or yearly or monthly?
While you're filming the show you are getting paid regularly. I've never been paid for acting, so I don't know the schedule but either weekly or monthly.
Residual checks are once a year.
Got it. I was thinking of the SAG weekly or minimum pay and was thinking they were saying they all get paid minimum for their weekly or monthly work which didn’t make sense. But I think I had seen the minimum is much lower at like $2000ish.
That’s a nice amount either weekly or monthly. Basically covers your rent in LA. But I don’t get why it’s capped at all. Seems like it should be based on minutes appearing on screen or something but I’d guess that’s a nightmare to calculate.
As the other guy said, residuals are tied to a work's release so an actor working on season 2 will get residuals for season 1, for example. They're not really monthly though, the checks come sporadically. They’ll get a few at once, and then nothing for a while.
Spohn talks about getting batches that total around $200-400 which can cover several months of residuals. When you average it out after the fact, it comes to roughly $100-300 per month.
The amounts also go down every year. Early checks are bigger. Each year they decrease, so it isn’t stable or predictable income.
The same rules apply to the main cast. The difference is scale. Leads had much higher upfront pay so their residuals are higher, but they're still formula based. They're not tied to popularity, they're still paid sporadically, and they still decline every year although Spohn didn't elaborate on that.
At the high end, even main stars were probably topping out at tens of thousands per year, maybe $50,000 to $200,000 in a good early year, then less after that. Supporting actors are talking a few thousand total over time, not per year.
As for whether it's good pay, Kimiko Glenn from Orange Is the New Black said that after 44 episodes she got only $27.30 in foreign streaming residuals and several other cast members have said they were underpaid after the show became a big hit. So the residuals declining over time is a bit meh since Netflix can still continue to capitalize on stuff while the actors don't get much of that income. This is different from past residuals where reruns and syndication meant ongoing checks that were meant to reflect continued use of the work.
To be fair to Noah, he's the only one of the Stranger Things kids who went to college. He's a business major in UPenn. He's said before that he still wants to continue acting, but at least he has a backup if ever he chooses that acting isn't for him anymore. Personally it annoys me when people take him going to college as a sign that he's "jobless", but I think it's him being really smart about his future.
Yeah coming into some threads on main and seeing people mock him for not having any acting gigs while he’s in college full time is a trip
Smart kid, for real.
Oh that’s right. I had forgotten that despite living in the same neighborhood as Penn. Good for him. At minimum, he should be able to translate his prestigious business degree plus his connections into a good career behind the scenes of Hollywood if he wants to stick around.
Funny enough he is also one of the few with major role in his acting credit prior to Stranger Things.
He was Tom Hank's son in Bride of Spies. He was also Charlie Brown voice in the Charlie Brown movie.
Most of the others had small background roles or Gaten (Les Miserables), Caleb (Lion King), & Sadie (Annie) worked in theater before also getting some background roles. Sadie and Caleb were on Broadway while Gaten was part of the US national tour of Les Mis.
Better to be a rich nobody than a poor nobody!
Idk dude. I think if you experienced losing everything you might have a different idea. You want everyone calling you by the name of a tv character you played when you were 12 when you open your door in the trailer park?
You don’t have to be “famous” to experience losing everything. That’s the cold hard fact of life. Just sayin.
Poor Bobby Driscoll
Yes, no one cares any more. It’s just like any job in the real world, but with money and prestige.
If you got a job selling fast food, you don’t hear about the terrible fast food industry abandoning you to fend for yourself as you spiral into homelessness from spending all of your money on drugs.
Self-control and moderation. Children privileged to work in the industry have heaps of laws and regulations to protect them. No one is entitled to a lifetime of protection and care because they appeared in a Nickelodeon tv show twenty years ago.
I thought this was a widely held opinion already
For sure, Demi Lovato, Jeannette McCurdy, Corey Feldman, Corey Haim, Amanda Bynes, etc are prime examples and have been very vocal about what they have faced.
And then there’s Leonardo DiCaprio, Ryan Gosling, Michael B Jordan, Anna Paquin, Regina King, Ethan Hawke, Neil Patrick Harris, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Scarlett Johansson, Christian Bale, Jodie Foster, Natalie Portman, Zendaya, Sabrina Carpenter, Elijah Wood, etc. who end up successful actors and seemingly healthy adults who no one refers to as child stars because they didn’t crash and burn. It’s confirmation bias.
Several of the successful actors you named also have spoken about trauma they’ve witnessed being child actors in the industry.
Look into what Natalie Portman said about being sexualized as a child and it'll change your mind.
I mean, a lot of the examples above did continue to have or still have decent careers into adulthood even if they’re not as prestigious. Having a good career now and more power for themselves doesn’t mean they didn’t have awful or traumatic experiences as well. But of course if someone chooses not to talk about it, we can never say for sure. But considering how common the stories are, I’d think most of them may have been exposed to things children shouldn’t necessarily be exposed to, even in a more indirect manner.
Athletes say the same things about the pressures they face as kids and no one dares to suggest to ban sports for kids
Kids (especially very young kids) aren’t typically part of professional sports teams along with adults are they? I feel like we’re talking about different things here.
Why would anyone ban kids from playing on their middle school basketball team or whatever?
They don’t call them professional teams but they compete on global stages. Who travel to compete; are on television and around adults. Essentially working and out of school a lot of the time. Look at the US gymnastics team and what they went through. Look at the boys from Donda Academy. Should no kids do gymnastics or basketball because of it?
A lot of them also have to attend camps away from their parents, out of state; when they’re truly excellent athletes. Look how many football and basketball players barely pass their courses and rarely attend class because they’re getting passed just to play. Then they get injured and have no careers or education or money. That’s ok?
I don’t know how you got to no kids being allowed to do sports from this. No, kids shouldn’t be in sports in a way that disrupts their lives. They should be able to play it recreationally if they choose to, just like kids into acting should be able to join theater clubs at their school or in their communities.
Most kids who excel in sports have to dedicate their entire lives to it. The same way kids who act and excel at it do.
Just like how most US schools don't get shot up.
/s
Just because they survived and seemingly came out okay doesn’t mean they didn’t struggle emotionally. Not everyone who needs therapy wound up dead or addicted to drugs.
Regular people also need therapy. There are more traumatized and drug addicted people from your hometown. That’s all I’m saying. A lot of the child stars who suffered had abusive and neglectful parents, they would’ve struggled outside of the spotlight too.
This is a red herring argument and not relevent to the topic at hand. The industry itself is abnormal for child development. Kids are working more than they are going to school and having normal social development with peers. There are plenty of parents dragging their kids to auditions constantly that never get famous but their childhood is being taken away to work so mommy and daddy don't have to.
Mentioning that plenty of "regular people" need therapy is not relevent to the discussion nor is it helpful. All you're doing is invalidating their experience and saying... what? That it's normal and they should shut up? That they were "lucky" because they made money and have no right to mention what they went through and how it fucked them up emotionally? Everyone knows that "regular people need therapy too". It's not relevent or helpful to use that fact to invalidate someone's experience in this manner.
Leo is a creep
Your list is folks who've had mental illness, addiction and eating disorders. But people who were never child stars have these issues too. I don't even think the child actors have a disproportionate prevalence of these things. Just from my high school year we have people who fit that profile too. Infact we even now have a jail bird convicted on violent robbery charges.
I think that these same stars issues get regurgitated in the press for years and years and so you internalize this idea that it's more common among child stars. Its just as common around you, you just aren't seeing what your old classmates are up to everytime you get on the internet.
I’m imagining a child actors union that fights for equality and safe treatment of child actors. Beyond therapy, they need a robust support system, and need to be protected from predatory interests. The outcome of this will be less glitzy and glamorous television shows and movies, but who cares about that anyways. American exceptionalism is overrated.
I don’t care about glitz and glamour, shit, we haven’t had that type of content in a while, and I don’t want it. Especially now.
Why would that lead to less glamorous tv shows? I don’t understand
I’m not really sure, but I’m saying that the less you are able to abuse people to get them to perform the a certain standard, the less they will be able to meet any standard. It’s like in any job. You can abuse your workforce to get them to perform to a certain standard, but if that workforce has union protections, your standards will have to drop, or change, but your workforce will be protected.
It’s not directly correlated like that though
iActually, in most cases, workers who aren’t taken advantage of produce higher quality outputs
The idea of brute-forcing quality and maximizing productivity for top notch quantity and quality is pretty ridiculous too, it’s very obvious that you have to strike a balance between the two and that the best things typically take more time/money/energy/etc.
I think everyone would benefit from having a therapist.
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I think almost everyone could benefit from therapy.
He’s right.
But also with everything going on I’m kind of sick of celebrities talking about their struggles - sorry.
Especially seeing how many of em either cower away when they could use their voice or literally stand up and applaud when facism is in the room (look at u stallone)
Yes there’s an especially f you to someone like Stallone who will be gone in 20 years while we are all left with whatever America is and with all his travels and experience working with many different people… to think Trump is what’s good for people is just infuriating
Way to make it about your political views when people talk about their mental struggles
Lol. We need less actors talking about politics not more. Especially not a child actor that’s clueless
Lol and what have you done, Katniss Everdeen?
Had to survive homelessness, Domestic violence, Abuse while helping my only parent who was going through white matter brain disease and cancer
Apart from that not much ?
Damn that sucks.
But I'm kind of sick of redditors who want to export their political activism to random celebrities talking about their struggles - sorry.
Well reading back what I said I’m not really sure what led me to say that. Sort of discounting what he said as if becuase there’s other issues in the world he’s not allowed to have his
I think maybe I saw another celebrity talking about something in an ignorant way and I was just in a fuck celebrities headspace
Fair enough, it's been a fuck of a year all around
Well he definitely uses his voice. Anyone remember those delightful stickers he was passing around awhile back?
He's not wrong, Hollywood is no place for kids
“Mind Over Mood” is hardcore CBT and it works but only if u work it.
ANTS!!!
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Um… no he didn’t? Dude had a huge drug problem for a while. Might not have been during his time as a kid actor, but he did not make it out unscathed.
Did he have that much of a drug problem? I always thought that was overblown.
His notoriously abusive father exploited him for money all through his childhood.
Plus he had sleepovers with Michael Jackson, even if nothing overt happened, still very inappropriate.
Hardly a good example of being the exception here.
I don’t have an informed opinion but my instinct tells my that children should not be working but focusing on studies.
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It’s even worse for child actors that were famous for having a terrible haircut for a decade
I think all child work should be against the law, and i personally dont understand why it isnt.
big agree, we need to make children work -- for what? our movies? make something animated then
This is where I fully support AI in film. If you must have a child or animal character then get your Sora on. If children enjoy acting, they should be doing school plays. Not working with adults.
Then you should think child athletes should be banned as well. High school and elementary kids who essentially work for their schools and are in the limelight and constantly on the road should be banned…
Acting, like sports, often yields the best results when you start young. The vast majority of successful actors all started as kids.
Acting for Hollywood and acting in their own high school or college are widely different. What you're arguing for is the latter, from where they go to the former. To use the professional sports comparison, you start at age level and/or B teams, but you don't get so much spotlight or stardom till you reach the main team.
OP is oversimplifying, but the gist is that people need to stop letting kids join the big professional stage without maturity (both emotional and physical) or proper care, as there's a good chance they'll crack under the expectations. Which happened both to Hollywood actors and athletes.
Yeah I think underage kids in the Olympics should also be banned
Yeah, i dont really care about that. I feel that it's unethical. Kids in sports is a different topic, and i dont think i know enough about it to comment. There is no reason children should be working for adults to profit off of.
Adults profit off children playing in sports. Anything a child does for money gain, makes the grown ups profit because children can't profit, legally.
Charlie Chaplin made his mark as a child performer. So did Mozart. Not sure why you have such a proclivity against under-16's doing work. Some under-16 year olds do their best work then. And get dull later. Taking a point with the small percentage that have bad parents, isn't indicative of the whole. What about Malaia, or Greta Thunberg, or Ronan Farrow who was a UNICEF spokesperson when he was 14?
A few under-16's have BAD PARENTS. That's what to focus on. Not under-16's doing stuff they think is fun.
The fact that they “do their best work” is subjective, and also misses the point. They deserve not to be forced to do work as kids, or have their labor exploited, even if that work is beneficial to adults because young people are perceived to do it well.
throwing all those intense fake emotions around constantly before your brain is fully developed prob isnt great
Yeah that's pretty much what history is told us since at least the '80s but I've only been alive since at least the 80s so it could have been going on for even longer. Every child star gets exploited and needs therapy it's been unknown thing in our society but nobody ever wants to talk about certain elephants in the room I give it up to Noah for actually trying to bring in a conversation in this modern era where we're supposed to have the means to an end to deal with these things but probably still don't
The Little Rascals has a pretty depressing history for the former cast members.
Because children are our the most oppressed group of people.
I don't think children should be actors. It's just not a good life for them in general. They should be allowed to be kids and not working at such a young age.
They need to stop exploiting, abusing and exposing the children, that works better then therapy
Of course it’s not normal. They are subjected to extreme child labor and given godly amounts of money. I think there’s plenty of proof out there that this combo makes for really fucked up people.
No shit, kid.
Humans were never meant to have this much attention focused on them, and for so long.
Fame is probably one of the most psychologically and spiritually dangerous things a human can attain.
The idea of it terrifies me. It would be so easy to get wrapped up in that world of flashing lights and red carpets, only to lose yourself as it all washes over you like a wave.
Why else do you think it is such a trope for famous people to burn out and crash?
Regular therapy appointments with a neutral third party should be a part of their defined benefits.
They need someone that is indifferent to their success as an actor, someone outside of the circle of adults that benefits from their success (agents, studios, parents, etc…).
I don’t know how the union landscape works in the entertainment industry, but they also need to be treated as a distinct bargaining unit within their union that has working conditions at its core.
I mean he is not wrong
Pretty sure every generation told you this for decades. It was on your parents to protect you from it.
He deff needs therapy for celebrating a genocide
Everyone needs therapy, kid. This is an abnormal world, filled with abnormal people and events — For everyone. At least you have copious amounts of money and are union for your troubles.
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Em dashes existed before ChatGPT, kid
sorry to you and all the elderly and geriatric 🥺
I’m younger than you
He also believes that Israelis settling the entire strip is A OKAY
*Wipes tears with 100 dollar bill
Yeah… its child abuse to make kids famous and wealthy at young ages.
I'd be a bit more concerned with that abnormal haircut Noah!
That bowl haircut is gonna take a while to unpack.
Find the DSM diagnostic code then use that to justify the billing code. Ca-Ching!
Most children need therapy to avoid all forms of trauma as it happens.
He definitely needs therapy
Someone tell him he doesn't have to be an actor
He can fuck off man
Of course he does. Lol. Perfect spokesperson.
Oh you must be so sad with your millions of dollars and free publicity.