Demi Lovato‘s Child Star documentary provided a safe space for fellow actors Drew Barrymore, Christina Ricci, Raven-Symoné and more to open up about the ups — and downs — of growing up in the public eye.
The Hulu special, which premiered on Tuesday, September 17, featured Lovato, 32, sharing her experiences from child stardom while interviewing other actors about the pitfalls of fame. Child Star marks Lovato’s directorial debut as she used the documentary to advocate for more protections to be put in place for kids getting involved in the entertainment industry.
“I wouldn’t end up where I am had I not made all the choices leading up to this point, but it came at a price,” Lovato explained during the doc. “There is definitely not a manual on how to navigate this industry at such a young age.”
Child Star pulled back the curtain on struggles many kids catapulted into fame face such as substance abuse issues, money problems and difficulties transitioning their career into adulthood.
Keep scrolling for the biggest revelations from Lovato, her family and other former child stars from the Hulu doc:
Demi Lovato
Christina Ricci and Demi Lovato Disney/Victoria Time
In addition to directing Child Star, Lovato made onscreen appearances as she interviewed each subject featured in the documentary.
“Being on camera makes a lot of my body issues come up and when I’m on camera I’m hyper aware of that. It just makes me a little uncomfortable,” Lovato admitted. “I didn’t realize that [fame] would have such a negative impact on my mental health. And unfortunately sometimes that looks explosive. Like an incident where you punch your backup dancer on an airplane or you overdose from heroin.”
Lovato got her start acting on Disney Channel before choosing to focus more on music. The shift has stopped Lovato from questioning her value based on the support she receives for her work.
“When I’m performing in a show and I see an empty seat, it really f—- with me. Even on stage, I will see an empty seat and I am like, ‘I’m not good enough,” she recalled. “It is this belief that was instilled in me as a young performer that I looked at my success as my self worth. I had a real hard time differentiating between the two. I dealt with a lot of need for external validation because I was equating my success to my self worth.”
Child Star allowed Lovato to reflect on the downsides that came with her fame. She specifically recalled the trouble that began when she started auditioning for roles when she was a kid living in Texas.
“The bullying started. The popular girls started writing in the bathrooms, ‘Demi is a whore.’ All these nasty things,” she revealed. “They had signed a suicide petition saying I should kill myself. It was passed around and people signed it. It was so extremely hurtful and that was a part of my motivation to follow my dreams because I knew it would get me out.”
After her big break on Barney & Friends, Lovato booked Disney’s Camp Rock franchise and the Sonny With a Chance series. The onscreen opportunities combined with her music ventures caused her to burnout — and affected her mental health as well.
“It was part of my disassociation that I don’t remember so much of my show,” she noted later in the doc. “But I do remember how difficult I was to work with because I was in so much pain and I was hurting.”
Lovato also spoke about the pressure that came with being labeled a role model, adding, “I had to be so conscious of everything that I did as a Disney kid. You obviously couldn’t cuss or swear in public. You couldn’t be seen with red solo cups because it could insinuate that there is alcohol.”
At the height of her child stardom, Lovato entered a treatment facility after punching backup dancer Alex Welch. She completed in-patient treatment in 2011 and publicly discussed her past struggles with bulimia, self harm and substance abuse issues.
“It wasn’t a situation where I came to the conclusion that I needed help,” Lovato said in the Hulu doc about her first stint in rehab. “It was like I am getting punished and I felt so hopeless.”
In 2018, Lovato suffered an overdose, which resulted in health complications including multiple strokes, a heart attack, and brain damage. Lovato entered an in-patient rehab facility after being released from the hospital.
“Finding drugs was easy, that was the only way I knew how to escape. But I was dealing with something much bigger than I could see,” she shared at the end of the documentary. “I get a lot of anxiety when I think about how close I came to not being here at all. I just tapped out.”
Madison De La Garza
Demi Lovato and Madison De La Garza, 2011. Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
Lovato’s mother, Dianna De La Garza, sisters Madison De La Garza and Dallas Lovato and fiancé Jordan Lutes appeared in several scenes of the documentary as well. At the end of Child Star, Demi and Madison, 22, candidly discussed how their relationship evolved since they have both gotten to a better place in their lives.
“It makes me sad that this was something we were all battling with individually whilst standing next to each other,” Madison said about how she, Demi and their mother privately battled with eating disorders. “Especially because it was originally the focus of my role on Desperate Housewives and then became the focus of my life.”
She continued: “I somehow believed that I was struggling with this completely and entirely on my own. Which was just not the cast at all.”
Madison and Demi recalled not seeing each other often when their respective careers blew up. They promised each other that they would make an effort now.
Kenan Thompson
The comedian, 46, began his career as a cast member on multiple projects at Nickelodeon. From there, Thompson joined Saturday Night Live in 2003 — and has since remained the longest-tenured cast member in the show’s history.
“That first commercial when they paid me, it was $800,” Thompson told Demi about his journey. “I was 12 so that may as well have been a million dollars.”
As Thompson’s star continued to be on the rise, he went from “rags to riches and then back to rags” again.
“In Florida they didn’t have the same labor laws. My mom met this dude either through church or the community who claimed to be good at getting you out of your tax problems. He was basically a con artist and ran away with my biggest earnings up to that point,” Thompson revealed. “By the time it was discovered, it was at the end of that Nickelodeon tenure. It was devastating because I discovered it in front of others. I was going to buy a house in Atlanta — my first home — and he didn’t show up with the f—— check.”
JoJo Siwa
Siwa, 21, became a household name after a stint on Dance Moms turned into her collaborating on multiple projects with Nickelodeon.
“Basically I signed an umbrella deal for everything so they owned all my rights to everything. Except social media,” Siwa shared with Demi. “We were very smart to be able to keep that separate. But if I had like a brand deal, I had to get it approved by Nickelodeon. But they owned everything.”
Siwa came out as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community in January 2021 — and her career suffered as a result.
“I didn’t realize I guess that no child star — who is still a child star — had ever come out before. The president of the network called me and was like, ‘What are we going to tell the kids? What are we going to tell kids and parents?’ And he was like, ‘Well you need to have a call with every retailer and tell them you are not going crazy,’” she claimed. “So I did and I had a call with every retailer. ”
Siwa continued: “Everything after I had come out had changed. The way they communicated with me, worked with me and how they developed my work.”
The dancer specifically pointed to how she was excluded from the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards in 2022 after being part of several iterations prior to her coming out. She accused the network of blackballing her. (A source close to Nickelodeon told Variety at the time that Siwa not receiving an invite was an “honest mistake.”)
Siwa later broke down for Demi how she posts hundreds of times a day on Snapchat after she evolved from her days as a child star. “There’s nothing left for me at the end of the day,” she admitted about her career.
Over the years, former Nickelodeon stars have opened up about their journey as child actors at the network — and not everyone had the same experience. Jennette McCurdy shocked her fans when she revealed that she wasn’t thrilled about her time on iCarly. “I did the shows that I was on from like 13 to […]
Alyson Stoner
During Demi’s time at Disney, she shared the screen with Stoner, 31, on multiple Camp Rock movies.
“I remember one time you followed me into the bathroom and I had been purging. And you picked up on it because you were in tune with those behaviors. You followed and talked to me,” Demi said while the former costars addressed their individual battles with eating disorders. “I was really grateful that someone didn’t just shun me or shame me. I felt like you were very understanding. That was definitely where I was like, ‘Oh f—, someone knows.’ But I was also really grateful you were there for me.”
Stoner said they went through similar issues when they promoted Camp Rock, adding, “[That] was a really dark time for me with my eating disorder. [It is the] only sense of safety and control that you have.”
While discussing their ups and downs, Stoner admitted that their friendship with Demi had been complicated. “Just like I was trained to be at your beck and call and whatever you want from me, I will provide,” they noted.
Stoner and Demi subsequently drifted apart in between the two Camp Rock films.
“It felt so hard to access you in that way. We lost that thread of trust, closeness and it didn’t seem like you wanted to be reached either at that point,” Stoner recalled. “The last few years of working together felt really challenging. The treatment did feel drastically different. I do remember a sense of walking on eggshells and so there was definitely a lot of fear of a blowup.”
Later in the doc, Stoner spoke of their own issues in the industry — specifically the problems involving money, saying, “I uncovered that people in my surrounding network had been taking money without me knowing for years.”
Macaulay Culkin
The Home Alone star, 44, didn’t take part in the documentary but the director of the movie, Chris Columbus, shared his perspective on Culkin’s complicated success.
“We went from shooting Home Alone and nobody cared. Then in the course of a year, Macauley Culkin became a huge star. That was unexpected,” he recalled. “When I was young, I had some pretty rough experiences with other films I had done.”
Columbus, 66, brought up Culkin’s public issues with his father, adding, “Once we wrapped, I didn’t know what was going on. Suddenly I realized parents had to be a big part of it. I couldn’t have him go home to a really shaky environment for the sake of a film. It wasn’t worth it. It is as important to cast the parents as it is to cast the kids.”
Culkin sued his mother, Patricia Brentrup, and father Kit Culkin at age 15 to remove them as his legal guardians. He chose to hire an executor for his finances — his family’s accountant — until he turned 18. Macauley and his brother Kieran Culkin have both publicly confirmed their ongoing estrangement from their father over the years.
Macaulay Culkin was the first in his family to become a household name — but he isn’t the last. Before scoring his breakout role as Kevin McCallister in Home Alone, Macaulay was surrounded by actors in his family. His father, Kit Culkin, was a Broadway actor who appeared in several theater productions. Kit’s brother Terry […]
Drew Barrymore
Barrymore’s breakout role was in Steven Spielberg‘s 1982 movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial but she had been working for years before that.
“[I started working at 11-months old.] It was a Puppy Chow commercial and I have never stopped working since then except for when I was institutionalized by my mother,” Barrymore, 49, told Demi about being placed in rehab at 13 and spending 18 months in an institution. Barrymore was put back into rehab in 2014 and one year later she petitioned for emancipation.
The actress opened up about being born into the famous Barrymore family, adding, “[My dad] was so cool — he was lethally, deadly cool. Toxically cool. [My mother] knew she needed to get away from him. He was dangerous and on a lot of drugs. Then she is just this single mom raising a baby in 1975 with no money.”
Drew continued: “I wonder why did my mom think it was a good idea for me to go into this. Was it because she wanted to be an actress herself? Was it because my dad and his family were actors?”
Drew has previously spoken about her complicated relationship with her father, who left the family when she was six months old. The duo reconciled before John’s death in 2004 but she cited Spielberg, 77, as more of a father figure during her formative years.
“I did not have a father and he was the person who made me feel like all of a sudden I wanted to be my best for,” Drew explained to Demi about her bond with Spielberg. “There was no authority in my life so I loved any boundary he set for me. It didn’t hit me until I was an adult that, ‘Oh, that is how parents are supposed to make you feel.’”
Drew, who has been outspoken about her past issues with drugs and alcohol, revealed she “used to get high” with her mother’s friend when she was only 10 years old.
“She would give weed to me and her son,” Drew said in the doc. “I can’t believe how much I respect life knowing that I disrespected it so many times. I have done s— no one knows I did. That is so crazy that somehow nobody found out about it.”
Christina Ricci
Ricci’s roles in Mermaids, The Addams Family films and Casper made her a child star as she dealt with a difficult home life behind the scenes.
“I was really unhappy in my home life and at school. I was really bored and I was getting into really crazy trouble at 7. As soon as I started going on auditions every day after school with my mother, all of that stopped,” she explained. “But what I really loved is getting to go with my mom on the bus to New York. My mother was kept in a place in my home where she was not present. As soon as she and I got out of the house, she had a personality. We became very close.”
Ricci, 44, referred to her childhood as “very chaotic,” saying, “My father was a failed cult leader and so he had all that really crazy narcissism that goes along with someone wanting to run a cult. He was very physically violent. There was never any peace in my house.”
Being on set was an escape for Ricci. “I knew nothing totally insane was going to happen. No one was going to get really mad and pretend to drive the car into a wall,” she revealed. “For me there was a refuge of emotional safety.”
As Ricci’s star continued to rise, she recalled “immediately” going to drugs and alcohol.
“I don’t remember feeling like there was any other way to be happy,” she admitted. “If you felt like you had absolutely no control over your like, that is one of the few things you actually had control over.”
Raven-Symoné
For Symoné, 38, being in front of the camera started as soon as she was an infant.
“I knew it was work immediately. My parents made sure that I understood this was a job. I get paid for it and you show up professionally,” she shared. “[You know what money is] when you are told how much you are getting paid for the job that you do. So I knew at 3 how much I was making and I understood it was a job. If you lose it, you don’t make that money.”
Symoné was asked whether she considered herself the breadwinner, to which she replied, “We call it a family business. Everybody has a job within the family business. Nobody likes to say one person is the breadwinner or not. Read through those lines.”
She added: “Sometimes the parent’s dreams might bleed into the child’s. And you get so enmeshed. Parents forget that young kids are performing for their parents’ love and affection. It is a lot of money and money does crazy s—.”
Symoné notably starred on The Cosby Show before transitioning to Disney Channel with her own show, That’s So Raven. However, Symoné no longer remembers her experience from some of her earlier projects when she was still a child.
“It is disappearing every single day,” she told Demi about her time on The Cosby Show in the ’90s. “Nothing is a pure memory for me right now.”
Later in the docs, Symoné and Demi recalled sharing the screen on Sonny With a Chance. Demi admitted she didn’t have any recollection of that time after becoming so burned out. Symoné, for her part, noted that Demi wasn’t super friendly to her but she immediately realized that Demi was struggling with the amount of fame being thrust onto her.
“People are going to milk all of the light out of you because you are young and you have the energy,” Symoné told Demi. “But you do not, you are still a human.”
