Tragic downfall of your favourite childhood stars
Celebrities get blamed for a lot of things but did you know they can also ruin a hardworking writer's story?
Here a certain someone was, ready to make a point about the various scrapes and scandals that a series of former child stars have just gotten themselves involved with and then comes another one. And another one.
By the time you read this, I'm sure some former Disney poppet's mug shot will be a rotating story on CNN or one time 90s sitcom graduate will have managed to, pantsless, fall out of an In and Out Burger clutching armfuls of stolen ketchup packets right in front of TMZ.
In just the last few weeks alone, a former Nickelodeon kids actress has joined Only Fans, a one time 11-year-old Oscar nominee has been forced to apologise after using a racial slur during a drug arrest, a singer who found stardom at 15-years-old has been sharing concerning social media posts that have people fretting about his mental health, a former teen Netflix actress set off a minor internet meltdown on the red carpet, and an early 2000s household name has admitted he's a 'new low' mentally and emotionally.
If you ever wanted concrete evidence that ending up with an agent, voice coach and your own Bel Air nine-bedder with a bowling alley and swim-up bar by the time you're in year seven generally doesn't work out well, you've come to the right place.
It's hard to quite know where to start.
Last week former Nickelodeon star Amanda Bynes, who began acting seven years old, announced that she was set to join the list of celebrity Only Fans' creators, 15 years after her last significant role.
In a post to Instagram revealing the move, the now 39-year-old made clear though that she would not be removing a single item of kit.
'Disclaimer: I'm doing onlyfans to chat with my fans through dm's,' Bynes wrote on Instagram.
'I won't be posting any sleazy content. Excited to join.'
The bargain price: $77-a-month. As of late last week, according to the LA Times, Bynes had yet to actually share anything.
Her decision to join the often controversial platform, best known for its nudey rudey, explicit content, is the latest plot twist in a complicated 13-year-long spiral involving a decade-long legal conservatorship.
In 2023 she allegedly started a fire in a neighbour's driveway, with authorities subsequently placing her in a 72-hour psychiatric hold after reportedly finding her walking around LA naked and alone and getting her face tattooed.
Then, only a day after Bynes revealed her new career, another child star was coming a cropper.
Over the weekend The Sixth Sense star Hayley Joel Osment had to do some PR self-flagellating and grovelling apologising after a video obtained by the New York Post showed him using an anti-Semitic slur during his arrest earlier this month for public intoxication and cocaine possession.
According to the Post, in the bodycam footage he shouted, 'I've been kidnapped by a f**king Nazi', claimed he was 'being attacked' and accused officers of 'torturing me.'
Osment also 'appeared belligerent and unable to keep his pants up as he struggled with police'.
Charming.
Like Bynes, his trajectory has gone from youthful entertainment world darling to TMZ scandal semi-regular, and he has gone from earning an Academy Award nod while still in year five to being the poster boy for the wisdom of 'Just Say No'.
Aged 18, Osment pleaded no contest to charges of driving under the influence of alcohol and for possessing marijuana.
Then, in 2018, police were called twice over his behaviour at Las Vegas' airport after he got involved in whatever the hell a 'public verbal scuffle' is.
The bodycam footage was filmed earlier this month when he was arrested in the California skiing resort town of Mammoth Lakes after police were called over his alleged 'unruly behaviour'.
He has now been charged with cocaine possession and disorderly conduct.
Also this week, Malcolm in the Middle star Frankie Muniz, who appeared in the title role from age 14, took to X to post, 'If I'm being 100% honest... Mentally/emotionally I may be at a new low. Just wanted to say it out loud'.
Muniz, now a NASCAR driver, said recent tough races had taken their toll.
So onto Justin Bieber, who has shared a series of social media posts saying things like 'I think I hate myself sometimes when I feel myself start to become inauthentic', 'I got anger issues, too,' and has expressed feeling 'unworthy' and like he's 'drowning and unsafe.'
Perhaps The Hollywood Reporter put it best when they ran a recent piece asking, 'What in God's name is happening to the once-mighty pop icon?'
'Whatever he's going through, I pray for him and hope he's OK,' a former Bieber collaborator told the Reporter.
'Seeing him disintegrate like this …he's lost,' an ex-team member commented.
Go as far back as last month and we get to have Millie Bobby Brown, who rocketed to global stardom delivering a devastatingly powerful performance as Eleven in Stranger Things.
I'm pleased to say she has, by contrast, managed to keep control of things, but her transition into adulthood has proven fraught.
March saw her doing the promo rounds for The Electric State, a $490 million action clunker, however it was not big budget bomb's dire reviews that hogged headlines but Brown's appearance while plugging the thing.
In news that stunned the internet, the now 21-year- old turned up at various premieres looking like the adult woman she now was.
Et voila, it was internet furore time! Critics and defenders then took their places on the discourse battlements to slog it out over the shocking fact that Brown had dared to actually dress her age.
The noise about Brown's image drowned out anyone really talking about State, with things getting so heated that the actress herself called out the situation, decrying the cacophony about her changed appearance as 'bullying'.
'Disillusioned people can't handle seeing a girl become a woman on her terms, not theirs,' she posted on Instagram.
I ask you - how many child stars have ever managed to make it to voting age and beyond unscathed?
Why is it that despite generations of former child stars, including the majority of the Brady's, have rung and rung again the warning bells about the perils of child stardom, Hollywood's youngest stars are still suffering rotten adult fates?
With Bynes, Osment and Brown, it's clear that making the leap from youthful fame and fortune to stable adult life is, for some reason, still seemingly impossible.
We are ever closer to getting a human on Mars but we still can't get a former TV kid to their mid-20s without scrapes, troubles and the occasional set of police handcuffs.
There's the obvious here, the mental health woes and the substance issues that have plagued wunderkinds since a eight-year-old Drew Barrymore started drinking, but it feels like there is something else going on too.
In the case of Brown, there exists a certain unpalatable, emotional resistance on the world's part to letting child actors shrug off their famed characters because we have this intractable set-in-aspic image of them.
To us they are frozen in amber, to some degree, forever cast in whatever role propelled them into being the only kid in their PE class with their own pool house.
Letting them move on is not something audiences are necessarily very good at.
But try we must, especially because Brown will be back out on the publicity trail when the final season of Stranger Things airs later this year.
It's time to let Eleven move on - and it's time to let Brown wear hoop earrings without the internet collectively losing their minds.
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Weinstein, 73, pleaded not guilty and has denied assaulting anyone or having non-consensual sex. The jury found Weinstein guilty on one of the three counts he faced, which stemmed from his alleged assault of former production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006. The jury found Weinstein not guilty of a charge stemming from his alleged assault of Kaja Sokola in 2002 when she was a 16-year-old aspiring actress. The jury has not yet reached a verdict on the third count, which charges him with raping aspiring actress Jessica Mann in 2013. They will resume deliberations on that count on Thursday. Regardless of their eventual verdict on the rape charge, Weinstein faces up to 25 years in prison when he is sentenced. He has separately been sentenced to 16 years in prison following a rape conviction in California. Jurors in the New York case reached their partial verdict on the fifth day of sometimes fractious deliberations. Before the jury announced their verdict on Wednesday, Justice Curtis Farber met privately with one person on the 12-member jury referred to as Juror One. The judge then stated in open court that there had been "fighting" in the jury room. "Juror One has made it very clear that he is not going to change his position," Farber said, adding that Juror One did not tell him what his position was. "He indicated that at least one other juror made comments to the juror that 'I'll meet you outside one day,' and there's yelling and screaming." Weinstein's lawyer Arthur Aidala asked for a mistrial. As Farber was preparing to dismiss jurors for the day to give them a chance to "cool off," the jury sent a note indicating it had reached a verdict on some counts. The retrial began on April 23. Weinstein has had a litany of health problems and attended the retrial in a wheelchair. In closing arguments on June 3, the prosecution told the 12 jurors that the evidence showed how Weinstein used his power and influence to trap and abuse women. The defence countered that the accusers lied on the witness stand out of spite after their consensual sexual encounters with the Oscar-winning producer failed to result in Hollywood stardom. A jury had in February 2020 found Weinstein guilty of raping Mann and sexually assaulting Haley. Sokola's allegation was not part of that case. The conviction was a milestone for the MeToo movement, which encouraged women to come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct by powerful men. But the New York Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, threw out that conviction in April 2024. It said the trial judge erred by letting women testify that Weinstein had assaulted them, although their accusations were not the basis of the criminal charges. Although the 2020 conviction was thrown out, Weinstein has remained behind bars because of his 2022 rape conviction in California, which resulted in a 16-year prison sentence. He is appealing that verdict. More than 100 women, including famous actresses, have accused Weinstein of misconduct. The retrial was handled by prosecutors with the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. They portrayed Weinstein as a serial predator who promised career advancement in Hollywood to women, only to then coax them into private settings where he attacked them. The defence rejected that characterisation, saying Weinstein engaged in "mutually beneficial" relationships with his accusers, who ended up with auditions and other show business opportunities. Weinstein co-founded the Miramax studio, whose hit movies included Shakespeare in Love and Pulp Fiction. His own eponymous film studio filed for bankruptcy in March 2018, five months after sexual misconduct accusations against him became widely publicised. A Manhattan jury has found Harvey Weinstein guilty on a sex crimes charge although the jury has not yet reached a verdict on all counts the former movie mogul faces in deliberations that have been marred by infighting and threats. Weinstein, once one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood, is facing a retrial after a state appeals court last year overturned his 2020 conviction. He was accused by prosecutors in the case of raping an aspiring actress and assaulting two other women. Weinstein, 73, pleaded not guilty and has denied assaulting anyone or having non-consensual sex. The jury found Weinstein guilty on one of the three counts he faced, which stemmed from his alleged assault of former production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006. The jury found Weinstein not guilty of a charge stemming from his alleged assault of Kaja Sokola in 2002 when she was a 16-year-old aspiring actress. The jury has not yet reached a verdict on the third count, which charges him with raping aspiring actress Jessica Mann in 2013. They will resume deliberations on that count on Thursday. Regardless of their eventual verdict on the rape charge, Weinstein faces up to 25 years in prison when he is sentenced. He has separately been sentenced to 16 years in prison following a rape conviction in California. Jurors in the New York case reached their partial verdict on the fifth day of sometimes fractious deliberations. Before the jury announced their verdict on Wednesday, Justice Curtis Farber met privately with one person on the 12-member jury referred to as Juror One. The judge then stated in open court that there had been "fighting" in the jury room. "Juror One has made it very clear that he is not going to change his position," Farber said, adding that Juror One did not tell him what his position was. "He indicated that at least one other juror made comments to the juror that 'I'll meet you outside one day,' and there's yelling and screaming." Weinstein's lawyer Arthur Aidala asked for a mistrial. As Farber was preparing to dismiss jurors for the day to give them a chance to "cool off," the jury sent a note indicating it had reached a verdict on some counts. The retrial began on April 23. Weinstein has had a litany of health problems and attended the retrial in a wheelchair. In closing arguments on June 3, the prosecution told the 12 jurors that the evidence showed how Weinstein used his power and influence to trap and abuse women. The defence countered that the accusers lied on the witness stand out of spite after their consensual sexual encounters with the Oscar-winning producer failed to result in Hollywood stardom. A jury had in February 2020 found Weinstein guilty of raping Mann and sexually assaulting Haley. Sokola's allegation was not part of that case. The conviction was a milestone for the MeToo movement, which encouraged women to come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct by powerful men. But the New York Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, threw out that conviction in April 2024. It said the trial judge erred by letting women testify that Weinstein had assaulted them, although their accusations were not the basis of the criminal charges. Although the 2020 conviction was thrown out, Weinstein has remained behind bars because of his 2022 rape conviction in California, which resulted in a 16-year prison sentence. He is appealing that verdict. More than 100 women, including famous actresses, have accused Weinstein of misconduct. The retrial was handled by prosecutors with the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. They portrayed Weinstein as a serial predator who promised career advancement in Hollywood to women, only to then coax them into private settings where he attacked them. The defence rejected that characterisation, saying Weinstein engaged in "mutually beneficial" relationships with his accusers, who ended up with auditions and other show business opportunities. Weinstein co-founded the Miramax studio, whose hit movies included Shakespeare in Love and Pulp Fiction. His own eponymous film studio filed for bankruptcy in March 2018, five months after sexual misconduct accusations against him became widely publicised. A Manhattan jury has found Harvey Weinstein guilty on a sex crimes charge although the jury has not yet reached a verdict on all counts the former movie mogul faces in deliberations that have been marred by infighting and threats. Weinstein, once one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood, is facing a retrial after a state appeals court last year overturned his 2020 conviction. He was accused by prosecutors in the case of raping an aspiring actress and assaulting two other women. Weinstein, 73, pleaded not guilty and has denied assaulting anyone or having non-consensual sex. The jury found Weinstein guilty on one of the three counts he faced, which stemmed from his alleged assault of former production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006. The jury found Weinstein not guilty of a charge stemming from his alleged assault of Kaja Sokola in 2002 when she was a 16-year-old aspiring actress. The jury has not yet reached a verdict on the third count, which charges him with raping aspiring actress Jessica Mann in 2013. They will resume deliberations on that count on Thursday. Regardless of their eventual verdict on the rape charge, Weinstein faces up to 25 years in prison when he is sentenced. He has separately been sentenced to 16 years in prison following a rape conviction in California. Jurors in the New York case reached their partial verdict on the fifth day of sometimes fractious deliberations. Before the jury announced their verdict on Wednesday, Justice Curtis Farber met privately with one person on the 12-member jury referred to as Juror One. The judge then stated in open court that there had been "fighting" in the jury room. "Juror One has made it very clear that he is not going to change his position," Farber said, adding that Juror One did not tell him what his position was. "He indicated that at least one other juror made comments to the juror that 'I'll meet you outside one day,' and there's yelling and screaming." Weinstein's lawyer Arthur Aidala asked for a mistrial. As Farber was preparing to dismiss jurors for the day to give them a chance to "cool off," the jury sent a note indicating it had reached a verdict on some counts. The retrial began on April 23. Weinstein has had a litany of health problems and attended the retrial in a wheelchair. In closing arguments on June 3, the prosecution told the 12 jurors that the evidence showed how Weinstein used his power and influence to trap and abuse women. The defence countered that the accusers lied on the witness stand out of spite after their consensual sexual encounters with the Oscar-winning producer failed to result in Hollywood stardom. A jury had in February 2020 found Weinstein guilty of raping Mann and sexually assaulting Haley. Sokola's allegation was not part of that case. The conviction was a milestone for the MeToo movement, which encouraged women to come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct by powerful men. But the New York Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, threw out that conviction in April 2024. It said the trial judge erred by letting women testify that Weinstein had assaulted them, although their accusations were not the basis of the criminal charges. Although the 2020 conviction was thrown out, Weinstein has remained behind bars because of his 2022 rape conviction in California, which resulted in a 16-year prison sentence. He is appealing that verdict. More than 100 women, including famous actresses, have accused Weinstein of misconduct. The retrial was handled by prosecutors with the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. They portrayed Weinstein as a serial predator who promised career advancement in Hollywood to women, only to then coax them into private settings where he attacked them. The defence rejected that characterisation, saying Weinstein engaged in "mutually beneficial" relationships with his accusers, who ended up with auditions and other show business opportunities. Weinstein co-founded the Miramax studio, whose hit movies included Shakespeare in Love and Pulp Fiction. His own eponymous film studio filed for bankruptcy in March 2018, five months after sexual misconduct accusations against him became widely publicised.
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Willow Stefanovic has stunned at a recent wedding in Italy. The daughter of Today host and his ex-wife Cassandra Thorburn took to Instagram on Tuesday to share several striking photos of herself at the nuptials in Tuscany. Willow, whose first name is Ava but uses her middle name, attended the European wedding as a guest and opted for a summer-inspired outfit. The model, 20, looked elegant in a light pink $463 House of CB dress, which she accessorised with a drop pearl necklace and bangle. A flattering tan accentuated Willow's toned arms, and her long brunette hair was styled naturally to fall just below her waist. The social media influencers' family and friends praised her in the comments. Her father's Today co-cost Sarah Abo wrote: "Gorgeous girl xx". Willow's stepmother Jasmine Yarbrough, who married Karl in 2018, said the model looked like "a dream". "So so so beautiful," another person said. "Breathtaking. So is the scenery," one more person said. Willow shares a striking resemblance to both her mother and father. She is one of three children of Karl and Cassandra, a children's author, before the pair divorced in 2017 after 22 years of marriage. The following February, the Today host announced his engagement to Jasmine and the couple married in a ceremony in Mexico that December. They welcomed a daughter, Harper, in 2020. The model's latest round of photos comes as she continues to share her worldwide travels with her 11,000 followers on social media. In February, Willow was seen enjoying dining and shopping in Uruguay and gave fans a glimpse of breathtaking water views in St Tropez, France. The 20-year-old resides in London, where she began studying for a degree in fashion at the prestigious London College of Fashion in 2023. Willow is already making moves to follow her famous father into the spotlight. She signed with Precision MGMT in 2021 and told Stellar that Karl "backs me 100 per cent as long as I'm happy." "We all know I didn't get my fashionista gene from him,' she said. Speaking to the publication, Karl encouraged his daughter's pursuit and said it's just the tip of the iceberg of her many wide-ranging interests. "She doesn't go into anything blindly, especially the fashion world," he said. "She's a strong, independent young woman and wants to pursue lots of things in life. We love her spirit."
