From Amanda Bynes to Haley Joel Osment: Child stars who have changed dramatically

Dakota blew onto our screens as the daughter of a man living with a disability in I Am Sam at just eight years old, and she's never looked back. 

​The young star was even nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for her role alongside Sean Penn and became the youngest member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at just twelve. 

While she has worked steadily in Hollywood since those days, Dakota told Porter magazine that the life of a child star is not easy. "The difficult part about starting so young, which I've totally come to accept, is that when you grow up and become a woman, people think you're younger."

"It never really bothered me. But I can see how it could make you run in the opposite direction, and grow up too quick, and not make the best decisions because you're trying to run away from people telling you that you're still little."

Most recently, Dakota starred in the critically acclaimed show The Alienist from 2019 to 2020 and Ripley in 2024. As for advice for prospective child stars, she told People, "As long as you love it, you're in the right place." 

"Sometimes you're working in a cold, wet forest, and if you can still have fun there, then you're on the right track."

Haley Joel Osment was the king of child stars after his incredible performance in 1999's The Sixth Sense opposite Bruce Willis, even garnering an Oscar nom at just 11 years old. 

After his huge success, he largely left the spotlight in 2006 when he went to college to avoid the "predatory, aggressive" tabloid culture of the time, so he told E News. 

"My parents used to say when I first started out in this industry, 'If it's ever not fun, you can quit tomorrow,'" he said in the interview. 

"And when I got to be college age, I got to go off and study theater and really think hard about whether I wanted to do this as my career in life." 

After living in NYC for 15 years and honing his craft, he moved back to Hollywood after the tabloids had "mellowed out a bit" and had roles in Wednesday and The Kominsky Method, amongst others. 

After his return, he noticed how the media landscape had drastically changed. "When I came up in this industry, the internet was around, but it wasn't so omnipresent that it is today," he said.

"So, for younger actors today, I'm always really impressed with them being able to manage the TikTok/Instagram/social media landscape because that's not something I ever really had to deal with at that age." 

The actor recently appeared in various projects, like The Boys and What We Do In The Shadows. 

She was a 2000s it-girl and teen idol after rising to fame for her talented turn in the 1998 film The Parent Trap and later for Mean Girls in 2004. 

Lindsay also released two successful studio albums and cemented her status as a bonafide star, but sadly, the pressure of fame was too much, and she spiralled into a drug addiction.

She explained to Piers Morgan in 2013 the trajectory of her downfall at just 20 years old. "I got arrested for my first DUI when I was 20, and they found me with drugs."

"And from then on, the press was on me all the time. It was the first time I'd taken drugs; I was out in a club with people I shouldn't have been with, and took cocaine and got in the car. It was so stupid."

Lindsay went to rehab multiple times in the following years before making her acting comeback in 2021 with Falling for Christmas, which fans couldn't have been happier about; who doesn't love a redemption arc? 

The 38-year-old now shares a son with her husband, Bader Shammas, and has a slew of upcoming projects in the works. 

Now we head across the pond to one of the cutest faces in cinema: Thomas Brodie-Sangster, of Love Actually fame. 

After winning hearts as Liam Neeson's precocious stepson in the film, he went on to star in films like Nanny McPhee and The Maze Runner trilogy.

His experience as a child star was markedly different to those of his American peers, as he told Yahoo!: "I don't think I've ever been afraid that fame or money or free drugs would mess me up," he said. 

"I remember school friends or associates going off and having a warm bottle of vodka by the park, and that was never me."

Thomas brought his preternatural talent into adulthood and even received an Emmy nomination for his supporting role in critical darling The Queen's Gambit. He is now married to Talulah Riley, an actress in her own right and former wife of Elon Musk. 

Little Miss Sunshine herself is another child star success story; after bursting onto the scene with her performance in the above film at ten years old and earning an Oscar nomination, she went on to have a steady career throughout each stage of her life. 

On her Vulnerable podcast, Abigail spoke to another child star, Christy Carlson Romano, about the issues with their profession and how they were treated. 

"That's the thing I feel about child acting, and everything is that you're given all of the responsibility but none of the respect," Abigail said. 

"The adults, they're like, 'We want you to be this way, this way, do this'…[your autonomy is] not really that important." 

More recently, the 28-year-old starred in the hit film August: Osage County with Meryl Streep, campy comedy Scream Queens, and Zombieland: Double Tap with Emma Stone. She married her longtime boyfriend, Ira Kunyansky, in January 2023. 

One of the most famous child stars ever is Daniel Radcliffe, the star of Harry Potter. He was cast as everyone's favorite wizard at just 11 years old and proceeded to dedicate over a decade to the character; but it wasn't all smooth sailing, despite appearances.

He revealed to Off Camera how he became an alcoholic and would drink excessively during filming to cope with the fame. "In my case, the quickest way to forget about the fact that you're being watched is to get very drunk," he said.

"And then as you get very drunk, you become aware that 'Oh, people are watching more now because now I'm getting very drunk, so I should probably drink more to ignore that more.'"

After recovering and completing the franchise, he pivoted to indie roles to great acclaim and is now conquering Broadway after winning a Tony this year for Merrily We Roll Along. 

He welcomed a son with his longtime girlfriend, Erin Darke, in April 2023 and told Newsweek how his kids will have a different experience than he did. 

"I would love them to be around film sets," he said. "A dream would be for them to come onto a film set and be like 'God, you know, I'd love to be in the art department. I'd love to be something in the crew.' Some part of this, but not from that."

"Film sets are wonderful places. I think a lot of the time, it can be wonderful for kids. But it's really the fame side of it that should be avoided at all costs."

Another multi-hyphenate child star shone in the form of Disney darling Hilary Duff, who rose to fame for her portrayal of Lizzie McGuire in the early 2000s. 

After starring in projects like Cadet Kelly and A Cinderella Story, Hilary's star power rose to new heights, and she broke into the music industry, earning mainstream success and topping the charts.

Despite her success, everything was not perfect for the teen idol. "Because of my career path, I can't help but be like, 'I am on camera and actresses are skinny,'" she told Women's Health Australia. "It was horrifying." 

After a break from acting, she returned to the scene in Younger, which ran from 2015-2021; she also produced and starred in How I Met Your Father and began filming a reboot of Lizzie McGuire before the studio ultimately scrapped it. 

Hilary told Cosmopolitan about her regrets in a 2022 interview, saying, "I wouldn't do it all exactly the same. But I can't look at my life and be like, 'I wish this was different,' because I don't know if it would get me to where I am right now."

"I wish I had a little bit of a better education. I wish I had a little bit of a college experience. But what would that look like? The thing that I crave out of it wouldn't look the way I pictured it because of who I am and how I came up."

He was the star of everyone's go-to Christmas movie and had the cutest face in the biz; after winning hearts in Home Alone and its sequel, he starred in a slew of films like Richie Rich and My Girl, cementing him as a household name. 

However, he became emancipated from his parents at just 15 years old so he could control his own money, he told Esquire. "I legally took my parents' names off of my trust fund and found an executor, someone who would look over my finances, just in case anyone wanted to stick their [expletive] pinkie in the pie."  

After rumors of drug use swirled in the 2000s, Macaulay took time away from Hollywood. He didn't take on any major projects and instead made appearances now and then in projects like The Righteous Gemstones. 

During this time, he met his girlfriend, Brenda Song, a child star in her own right. The two now share two kids and are as loved up as ever. 

His on-screen mother, Catherine O'Hara, said this of the actor during a speech when he received a star on the Walk of Fame: "I think Macaulay survived [fame] to become a fine young man."

"He had, somehow, the wisdom and self-preservation at the age of 14 or something to say 'stop.' He chose to allow himself a life outside of the work, and he's been making his own choices since."

The world's most famous twins got their start on Full House when they were just nine months old and immediately won hearts with their angelic faces and sassy attitude. 

After the show ended, they built their brand as teen idols and starred in a slew of films between 1993 and 2004, including When in Rome and New York Minute. 

They even created their own entertainment company, Dualstar, which they became co-presidents of when they turned 18 and is now a billion-dollar enterprise.

Ashley retired from acting in 2004, while Mary-Kate went on to have minor roles until 2012. The girls reportedly had a wild time in college, and sadly, Mary-Kate suffered from an eating disorder and addiction thanks to the immense pressure of fame. 

However, they turned it all around with their hugely successful and respected fashion label, The Row, which has been worn by the likes of Gigi Hadid and Jennifer Lawrence, and are now fully-fledged business moguls. 

Mary-Kate hinted at how damaging child stardom was to Marie Claire in 2010: "I look at old photos of me, and I don't feel connected to them at all," she said. "I would never wish my upbringing on anyone."

Ashley married her love, Louis Eisner, in 2022 and gave birth to their son in 2023. Mary-Kate was married to Olivier Sarkozy, the half-brother of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, from 2015 until she filed for divorce in 2020. 

Perhaps the saddest story on this list is that of Amanda Bynes, whose stratospheric stardom led to one of the most public celebrity breakdowns in recent decades. 

She got her start on Nickelodeon sketch comedy All That in 1996, leading to her own show, which ran from 1999 to 2002. 

After shaking off her child star history, she became a rom-com queen with films like She's the Man and What A Girl Wants. Her last film was Easy A in 2011. 

In the following years, Amanda would be arrested for marijuana possession, driving under the influence, and multiple hit-and-runs, and her tweets became increasingly erratic. 

When she was 16, she tried to become emancipated from her parents to no avail. Eventually, she was placed under a conservatorship in 2012 after her slew of arrests, and remained under her parent's control until 2022 following backlash after Britney Spears was freed from her own conservatorship. 

Following the end of the conservatorship, the 38-year-old released a statement about her hopes for the future. "In the last several years, I have been working hard to improve my health so that I can live and work independently, and I will continue to prioritize my well-being in this next chapter," she said. 

"I am excited about my upcoming endeavors - including my fragrance line - and look forward to sharing more when I can."