DREAM / The Prime Minister resigns and wakes up under the Parisian bridge!

 Kliko këtu për të tjera
Voxpress:

What parent would truly wish fame for their child?

2026-08-24 18:28:45Lifestyle SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
What parent would truly wish fame for their child?
Hayden Panettiere

Reading Hayden Panettiere's painful story and her attempt to escape her past as a child star has convinced me that Hollywood has created an industry that needs to disappear, says Claire Cohen.

Claire Cohen – The Independent

It's one of those things that most parents joke about, right? Once your little one sings "Twinkle Twinkle" a few times or performs skillfully in front of the grandparents, one of you will say, "He'll be on stage before we know it!"

I mean, who doesn't want their child to be recognized for their talent (beyond "Baa Baa Black Sheep," ideally)? To live a life that others can only dream of? A friend recently told me that she wants her son to be a rock star, and, on some level, I get it. I really do.

But then I read about the painful death of actress Hayden Panettiere, at the age of 36, and I thought: no. The former child star spent most of her life in the spotlight.

It would be easy to analyze where everything might have "gone wrong" for Panettiere – the addictions, the difficult relationships, the loss of custody of her daughter – all of which she recounted in her memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning, published earlier this year.

But much of what shaped her—by her own account—had to do with the fact that she was a child star. She was drawn to acting at age four, when she landed her first role on a soap opera, and became a superstar at age 16, with a role as a superhero fan on the series Heroes. She later starred in the series Nashville.

Her mother, a former actress, was also her trainer, signing her up to work as a model at the age of four months.

“I lived to make her proud of me, and I felt like the only way to earn her love was to do my job properly,” she said in an interview earlier this year. “God forbid if I didn’t do something the way she wanted it… It was devastating to a child’s soul.”

School, she wrote in her memoirs, was "torture" during the periods when she managed to attend classes.

She told reporters, "I was raw meat, lying in front of a pack of hyenas ready to tear me apart."

Of the occasion when she was lured onto a superyacht to sleep with a British star, she said: "It was the closest thing to human trafficking I've ever experienced."

Of a team member who gave her a “mood pill” – which she later believed was amphetamine – to help her cope with Heroes promotional activities, she said: “If they told me to jump, I would jump.”

The Hollywood machine, she added, had "prepared" and "shaped" her in such a way that she would not object, while saying "no" was never an option - especially given the pure, almost perfect image that is unfairly imposed on many child stars and which they can never fully live up to.

I don't need to list the names of all those who, having worked from a young age, also died incomprehensibly young. There comes a point when a repeating pattern becomes undeniable, and we are long past that point – to a stage where this has become completely normalized.

I understand that some children are (at least outwardly) as eager for early fame as their parents, but those who manage to thrive under such pressure now seem like the exception.

Essentially, we are dealing with an under-regulated industry that often fails in its duty to look after children who know nothing about agents, managers, money, contracts or how to handle adult responsibilities. At a vulnerable age, they are thrown into a world where exploitation is rampant in all its forms. And yet, we continue to romanticize it all, presenting their extraordinary success as some kind of shining example.

Then another tragedy occurs, the debate about the need for change begins, there is talk of moments that should serve as turning points and the like - and then everyone returns to the world of showbiz.

Should we ban child stars? Maybe we should. There is precedent when it comes to setting age limits – for example, the International Gymnastics Federation raised the minimum age for professional artistic gymnasts to 16 for girls and 18 for boys.

Furthermore, many of the teenage roles were played by actors in their twenties who looked younger – although, I have to admit, casting the actors for the Harry Potter films would have been a challenge.

But, in truth, we live in a world where profit is often worth more than people, and there will always be a market hungry for young stars – a market that seems ready to devour them and then throw them away.


Në përputhje me standarded JTI

Video

SHIKO KANALIN NE YOUTUBE
×