Are they the worst parents on Earth?
Well, maybe not, but they’re certainly not in line for any parent of the year awards either.
You see it all the time here. Child stars who are screwed over by their parents. Gary Coleman had all his money taken, Lindsay Lohan has two equally screwed parents. One’s in an out of jail, the other used her as a way to skip the line at clubs and get free ice-cream. Macaulay Culkin had some winner parents, fighting not over him, but his funds. There’s more screwed over former child stars than I can list.
Of course, there’s some good ones in the group. Unfortunately, it seems like it’s a 8/2 ratio. The eight being the bad parents. Most stage parents are like the ones in the Bruno video above. They don’t give a shit about their kids safety, or if the kid wants to do it or not. All they can think about is living vicariously through their kids, or paying the rent.
The average kid in Hollywood goes on 90 auditons for each one they get. They get told they’re not cute enough, they’re too fat, they sound funny. That’s so much rejection for a little person to deal with. Their parents keep dragging them to the next audition though, just in case this one is their “Big Break”.
I’ve met some great stage parents. When I was teaching acting classes, there was some parents who brought their kids along because they thought it would be a great way for their kids to learn some confidence, get to play with other kids, learn to speak in public. Then there’s the ones who don’t care that their kid hates the class. They want their kid to learn so they can pack off to Hollywood and live off their kid. They didn’t care how much classes cost, it was all just an investment in their future.
I think parents shouldn’t try to live vicariously through their kids. I also don’t think they should expect their kids to pay the bills. At least here in the US, they now have to put the majority of the money in trust, but there’s still ways around it. Kids can make millions of dollars and still be broke and unemployed when they’re 18.
It’s a parents job to protect their kids. If parents are expoiting their kids, and the kid is a working enough to support themselves, they should be able to emancipate themselves from their parents, like Michelle Williams did. Most working child stars act more grown up than their parents anyway.
I hope that the producers of Bruno handed all that footage over to CPS, who then investigated these parents.
I completely agree. As a mother of a 21 month year old so many of my friends ( a lot who are actors themselves) have been telling me to put my bub into castings. Last week I went with my hubby ( who is an actor) to an audition, not to the audition but the waiting room because we were planing on having coffee after he went for the audition. I was waiting in the waiting room with my daughter and their were a whole lot of 9 year old girlds.
It was sad, each one of them was beautiful. They all had a different look, the red head, the cheeky one, the little girl next door, the blond. But each one of them was the kind o fkid you’d look at and say WOW that /your child should be in the movies.
I sat there in the audition room and my insides felt like they were twisting up, I felt so sorry for each of these 10 girls. Each one of them were different , yet perfect , yet only one of them would get the prize. The role. As a child of ten how could they deal with that rejection?
It was at this point I realized that as a mother I would and never could subject my child to that. I understand that we need child actors in story telling in films but perhaps there is a way of auditioning them so the children don’t feel like they have lost out if they don’t get the role.
i don’t know the answer, but I do agree there are parents put there living through their kids..who need to stop and think of how they would deal with the rejection of auditions and then ask themselves if that type of environment is a good environment for their child.