Child Actors

RECENT YEARS

To be sure, the American film industry's promotion of child stars in recent years has relied upon their abilities to act within adult contexts, rather than in the child-centered vehicles more common before the 1950s. The same hit-or-miss trends continued for child actors through the 1990s and thereafter, as witnessed by the forgettable lead performances of Michael Oliver in Problem Child (1990), Mason Gamble in Dennis the Menace (1993), Cameron Finley in Leave It to Beaver (1997), and the juvenile casts of Newsies (1992) and The Little Rascals (1994). Meanwhile, some kids did have breakout roles, like Christina Ricci in Mermaids (1990), Jason James Richter in Free Willy (1993), Kirsten Dunst in Interview with the Vampire (1994), and Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense. Nonetheless, most of these films relied upon the presence of major adult stars, which remains the typical scenario in which child actors continue to be featured.

The only child star of the 1990s who commanded attention on his own was Macaulay Culkin (b. 1980), who rose to immediate prominence as the ten-year-old with the one-boy-show Home Alone (1990), and continued to lure audiences with performances in My Girl (1991), The Good Son (1993), Richie Rich (1994), and the inevitable sequel to Home Alone, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York in 1992. Yet like so many before him, he burned out as an actor before his adolescence and only later returned to acting.

In the second century of cinema, child actors continue to rely upon the marquee value of adult stars in order to propel their careers. After Osment's continued visibility in films like Pay It Forward (2000) and Artificial Intelligence: A.I. (2001) with older co-stars, Dakota Fanning emerged as a similar child lead, who enjoyed the luxury of starring with Oscar^® -nominated adults in I Am Sam (2001), Man on Fire (2004), and War of the Worlds (2005), all before she turned twelve. Still, the film industry has rarely been able to build child actors into celebrities since the 1950s, and while charismatic and talented children will always be needed to fill important roles in cinema stories, the record shows that they face obstacles in maintaining their importance as well as their celebrity.