Tragic downfall of your favourite childhood stars

They rose to fame before they were old enough to buy alcohol... but what impact does Hollywood fame really have on a child?

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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.

Frankie Muniz pictured in 2002 as Malcolm in Malcolm in the Middle. Picture: Supplied

He made an honest social media post about his struggles. Picture: Chris Graythen/Getty

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.

Amanda Bynes rose to fame as a childhood star. Picture: Supplied

Some of her recent behaviour left many concerned. Picture: Instagram/Amanda Bynes

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.

Childhood movie star Haley Joel Osment was recently arrested. Picture: Supplied

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?”

Justin Bieber and Usher pictured in 2009. Picture: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Bieber’s recent appearance have worried many. Picture: XNY/Star Max/GC Images

“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.

Millie Bobby Brown was just a child when she began acting in "Stranger Things". Picture: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

Brown, pictured in March 2025, has grown up in the spotlight. Picture: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images

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.

Drew Barrymore also had her wild years. Picture: Supplied

She famously began partying from around the age of 8. Picture: Supplied

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.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.

Originally published as Tragic downfall of your favourite childhood stars