I’ve worked on TV shows with child actors, and lots of parents ask me for advice about getting their kids into show business. I always answer: Do you let your kid play in the middle of the busiest street in the neighborhood? Drink alcohol? Play with Daddy’s gun?
Then go ahead and put your kid to work in Hollywood and hope everything will be okay.
Why parents would willingly give up their children’s childhood is beyond me. And I haven’t yet known a successful child actor who wasn’t supporting the whole family, including Daddy, and therefore calling the shots. One parent always ends up leaving (the other has to be on set to keep the gravy train rolling).
Corey Feldman’s parents took the money and tossed their baby into a tiger cage. Then years later, hopelessly damaged, he blames the Los Angeles Zoo. Um, it’s a ZOO. And your parents put you there.
I guess it’s hard to hate your parents. They say even hookers love their pimps.
Sounds horrible...
The true villains are parents who neglect their children. It’s easier to target the predators than the parents who destroy the lives of their kids.
Ralph Waite, the father on The Waltons and an ordained Presbyterian minister, preached a sermon at a nearby church when I was a kid in Chino, in Southern California. His message was on the evils of Hollywood and never letting your kids work there.