What’s it like to grow up as Harry Potter?
I don’ t know. And in fact nobody knows since Harry Potter is a fictional character.
But one kid has an unusual insight on the matter–Daniel Radcliffe–the kid who plays Harry Potter in the movies.
Time Magazine has a story about him and the other kids playing in the Potter films.
Reading the article makes for an interesting insight into the world of child actors.
The fact that the Harry Potter movies are so successful has kept the kids locked in an unusual sociological bubble for years, with years yet to go (apparently–unless they re-cast the parts).
Personally, I’m disturbed by some of the things child actors go through. I often see scenes in movies and TV shows where I find myself thinking, "I really hope they got the child actor off the set before they filmed what’s going on in this shot"–or realizing that they clearly DIDN’T.
I couldn’t imagine allowing a child of mine to grow up in the entertainment biz, and especially not becoming a central player in a franchise like Harry Potter. I’d want my kids to have much more normal experiences growing up. Even with precautions taken (like only letting the kids film for four hours a day), I’m afraid that the experience would fundamentally warp them as adults. After all, former child stars don’t have a very successful track record as a whole.
Gary Coleman turned out okay.
For the most part.
Peoples growing up in different ways, I think. And growing up as Harry Potter would be amazing! Check my latest Harry Potter fic on the link I gave you!
Parent’s have a hard enough time as it is, trying to do what they can to ensure that their kid’s grow up the right side of normal,I’d not advocate a career for children in film, but a healthy interest in theatre and the art’s is a MUST! (even if my son does prefer sci-fi..what am ~I going to do with him 🙁 )
In my experience the parent’s of such children often live vicariously through them…I know parent’s who have pushed their children all the way through dance and stage school and their children are exhausted and have such a fear of ‘letting down’ their parent’s, it’s not right.
Of course, there will be children for whom acting runs through the very blood in their veins, but the parent’s have to always maintain a healthy grasp and control over the situation.
God Bless.
You have to pay to read the entire article.
I like your point regarding some of the scenes that children are involved in filming — I have never seen for instance, The Exorcist, all the way through — I think over the years I’ve started watching it a couple of times and just found it too disturbing, particularly the idea that Linda Blair (as a child) was put through acting out those horrible scenes.
Echoing what Trish stated, I was pleased to learn some years back that when Stanley Kubrick was making his version of The Shining, he alwayed made sure that when filming the “scary parts” that the little boy actor, Danny Lloyd, was not even on the set, much less in the scene. Given Kubrick’s querky oeuvre, this flash of decency from him was refreshing!
People respond differently to the celebrity “bubble”, but I think it mostly depends on the adults around them (of course):
Michael Jackson – Amazing talent, apparently a nice kid, became an emotional cripple, and then morphed into a monster. A case study in what happens to some people when they can have anything they want, and behave however they want, all the time. Imagine a 100-foot-high toddler.
Shirley Temple – For those of you who don’t know that name, she was a multi-talented child-actress who made a bunch of movies and was huger-than-huge. By the age of 12 she had starred in 44 films and had won an Academy Award.
Shirley Temple Black got out of showbiz, educated herself, and raised a family. Richard Nixon appointed her United States Representative to the United Nations in 1969, for Gerald Ford she was Ambassador to the Republic of Ghana and later the first woman White House Chief of Protocol, for Ronald Reagan she served as a foreign affairs officer with the State Department, and George Bush appointed her Ambassador to Czechoslovakia.
Wow. I didn’t know Shirley Temple did all of that.
Time to visit Wikipedia.
I’m sure everybody’s heard about the kid (was his name Danny?) from the Partridge Family. He ended up turning out all right from what I understand though.
DJ
Evidently you haven’t been watching the show where they are following Danny through rehab and his marriage destructing. Ugly, ugly stuff. All of these folks need prayer and the Shirley Temple example is probably the only real shiny penny in the lot.
Bob
A small bit about Shirley Temple Black:
Despite all the fame, Shirley remained an unspoiled, natural child, thanks to her mother, who would not let her lunch in the studio commissary where she would be ogled and asked for her autograph. And after work, the girl was made to go home and play with the neighborhood kids.
“My mother was a shy woman who gave the impression of being austere,” Temple Black recalled. “But really her tummy was churning all the time with the things that were going on at the studio. After I got away from the starlet part of my life, she was with me all the time.
“The exception was on ‘Little Miss Marker,’ when the director sent her on an errand before a crying scene.
“He told me, ‘Your mother has been taken by a man with a green face and red eyes.’ I started crying hysterically. They got their scene, but when my mother returned she was furious. She never again left me alone on a set.”
I think the Peter Ostrum who played Charley in the original “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” turned out pretty well. He did have a divorce and is remarried but otherwise is doing well as a vet. Here are a a wiki on him http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Ostrum and a good article here http://www.avma.org/onlnews/javma/nov00/s110100g.asp
But you see the clear distinction is that Peter Ostrum wanted to do “Charlie and Chocolate Factory”, his parents didn’t push it and after he did it he decided he didn’t want to do any more movies and his parents were fine with that. Probably playing the lead kid right off cured him of the desire to have a lead in the movies. Many kids play a side character and if (or when) they get a job as a lead are already on the carousel and its hard to get off.
Contrast them with professional athletes. Despite all the bad news about pro athletes most of them are pretty decent folk. There is a great article in the current Sports Illustrated by Steve Rushin (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/preview/siexclusive/2005/writers/steve_rushin/11/07/rushin1114/index.html?url=http%253A%252F%252Fpremium.si.cnn.com%252Fpr%252Fsubs2%252Fsiexclusive%252F2005%252Fwriters%252Fsteve_rushin%252F11%252F07%252Frushin1114%252Findex.html but only available for subscribers) talking about how most pro athletes normal, good people.
I heard an interesting comments on Sports Talk America last night saying that the vast majority of pro athletes who had long careers live quite normal (and sometimes extraordinary) lives after their sports careers. The reason given for some of the extraordinary careers was that same attributes that made them good long-term pro-athletes (work ethic, tunnel vision) translates very well into outside world.
I also wonder if we had pro-athletes at the age of 11 or so we could see the same problems as in acting. I seem to recall the the biggest jerks in sports tend to be tennis players which also coincidentally has the same problems as acting (pushy parents, young children competing, homeschooling just to keep the child working).
I think there’re no garentees in life or parenthood. I had a nuclear working class family of no noteriety and things were pretty harry (no pun intended). I can’t beleive I bounced back as QUICKLY as I did, once I got out of that house. I guess knowing they’re nuts is half the battle, yo joe.
How many kids of NO fame end up on drugs, etc? It’s not like being compeltely unfamous shields you from bad childhoods, bad self-images or bad decision making. Sure being famous increases the odds… but that’s a decision parents have to make. There’re plenty of parents that won’t let their kids do stuff like that, because they’re afraid of the reprocussions. Whatever decision parents make, I guess you can just hope they’re doing it for the child, and keeping his best interests in mind. His dad is “in the buisness,” so hopefully he isn’t pushing the kid, or being entirely naieve about it.
Bob: No I haven’t. Ah well.
Well, I know Sean Astin is at least normal. 🙂
when Stanley Kubrick was making his version of The Shining, he alwayed made sure that when filming the “scary parts” that the little boy actor, Danny Lloyd, was not even on the set, much less in the scene.
While I do commend this, and would also prefer that children not be exposed to everything in the making of movie scenes, I would still like to remind people that things are not nearly so intense and scary (or whatever) on a set as they are on the screen. We’re getting a very limited view, designed to be consistent with a scripted story. The actors, on the other hand, can always see the cameras, lights, wires and cords, director, and so forth. For us, all the non-scary bits are edited out, but for the actors, it’s the majority if not the whole of their days. In short: we see blood, but they taste corn syrup.
The same can be true, by the way, in the filming of “racy” sex scenes. It’s not quite so appealing when there’s a crowd of people judging how well you can kiss someone you’re not particularly interested in. We see the long, erotic kiss, but they taste the feta cheese and onions the other actor’s been eating as an on-set prank. 🙂
I’m not saying that everything is safe and rosy for kids and other folks working on movie sets. But I am saying it’s very different from what we see.
I have never seen for instance, The Exorcist, all the way through — I think over the years I’ve started watching it a couple of times and just found it too disturbing, particularly the idea that Linda Blair (as a child) was put through acting out those horrible scenes.
“In his efforts to protect the preteen Linda, director William Friedkin arranged for the most terrifying moments of the film – the head turning, the vomiting of green bile and the bloody wounds – to be filmed using a dummy. When it was leaked that the child was frequently replaced by a dummy, and that her ‘Satan’ voice and its obsentities were actually recorded by an older actress, Linda’s almost certain chances of an Academy Award were dashed.” She also had an older stunt double.
See also the blood/corn syrup comment above.
I’m less surprised by the comment about Kubrick than some-he had a fairly unpleasant and sterile mind in alot of respects, to judge by his film work, but he was also reputed to be passionately attached to his children and grandchildren.