Annette Sharp: How Kate Ritchie and Daniel Johns have navigated childhood fame

Growing up in the spotlight presents many challenges, writes Annette Sharp. But why do some childhood stars, — like Kate Ritchie — thrive, while others — like Daniel Johns — struggle?

Kate Ritchie was a tender eight years old when she first melted hearts as Sally Fletcher on the Channel 7 soap Home And Away in 1988 — a production that has spawned almost as many stellar acting careers as scandals.

In the creative environment that helped launch the careers of Chris and Liam Hemsworth, Simon Baker, Guy Pearce, Julian McMahon, Naomi Watts, Isla Fischer, Melissa George and Dannii Minogue, a juvenile Ritchie was expected to navigate the hazards that would ultimately contribute to the downfall of several of her other peers.

Among the Home And Away alumni who smashed on the rocks while trying to navigate them are Jodi Gordon, Johnny Ruffo, Orpheus Pledger, Putu Winchester-Stanton, Todd Lasance, Dieter Brummer and fellow child star Felix Dean, all of whom were caught up in drug scandals at one time, while Heath Ledger lost his life battling substance abuse.

Yet Ritchie, a Home And Away veteran of 20 years, has somehow survived the trials and traumas of childhood fame intact, while managing to keep her head above the pack. It’s a fact that surely speaks to Ritchie’s gritty disposition and character.

Despite having struggled with public scrutiny relating to her maturing body while appearing five nights a week on TV during pubescence — a fact that may or may not have influenced her decision to have a breast reduction — and public interest in all things Kate, from her hobbies to her relationships, she is still standing.

Kate Ritchie has been on TV since she was eight years old.

Through grim experience, Ritchie learnt to separate her public and private personas, and successfully emerged from Sally Fletcher’s good-girl shadow, a character the actor at one point hinted was much at odds with her own repressed “incredibly crazy, wild, naughty girl inside” self.

Today, at 44, Ritchie is a successful self-made woman, a popular radio broadcaster on Nova and single mother of one with one failed marriage — and one low level 0.06 drink driving conviction — behind her.

Daniel Johns has endured public mental health battles.

How very different Ritchie’s public image is to her contemporary Daniel Johns, one-time Silverchair frontman, who at 43 is just a year younger than Ritchie yet seems to be regressing emotionally and socially with each passing year.

Having found international stardom at 15 with his Newcastle band, Johns has been falling apart in the public eye for decades, as perhaps might be expected of an egotistical rock god who has fame, glory and riches thrust upon him.

Having been charged with high-range drink-driving in March following a head-on collision outside Newcastle, for which he registered a blood alcohol reading of 0.157, three times over the limit, Johns sat down this week to give an interview to Ten’s The Project in which he informed us he is a “sensitive” “artist” who has lost himself.

“I don’t know who the hell I am,” he told a pained-faced Carrie Bickmore.

The March drink-driving offence is not Johns’ first and one wonders what, if anything, it has taught him.

Having acknowledged earlier this year he has been self medicating with alcohol to deal with anxiety and depression, Johns this week looked a haunted version of his younger self, a kind of immature Peter Pan figure who is yet to grow up.

Of course, he has plenty to be grateful for, but maybe chief among them should be that fame wasn’t thrust upon him at age eight, as it was Ritchie, who, though off air at the moment, will live to fight another day.