It's the rare child actor whose career blossoms in adulthood

By NANCY MILLS
New York Daily News

HOLLYWOOD - Although you're going to be seeing some of today's child actors for years to come, nobody knows which ones. No matter how talented a child actor is, the path through adolescence is full of hazards. Drugs, changes in appearance, inflated egos, family disintegration, bad luck and poor decision-making can all make careers implode.
"The failure rate is as high as ever," says Leonard Maltin, film historian and critic with "Entertainment Tonight."

"The reason," he adds, "is that acting is not a normal life, although it doesn't have to be a bad life. I once asked [former 1940s child star] Dean Stockwell what he'd say if his children told him they wanted to act. 'I'd say, great!' he said. 'See what plays they're putting on at school. Or maybe we can build a stage in the backyard. But you're not going to work for money. That's not normal.'"

Failure can be devastating. Take Wil Wheaton, for instance. A working actor from the age of 7, he got a major break at 12 when Rob Reiner cast him alongside River Phoenix, Corey Feldman and Jerry O'Connell in "Stand by Me."

"What happens to young actors is painful," says Wheaton, now 32. "One morning, you wake up and it's like someone has thrown a switch. You're not cute anymore. The industry has moved on, and there's a new crop of 10-, 11-, 12-year-olds. Nothing prepares you for this moment."

After "Stand by Me," Wheaton landed the role of Wesley Crusher on "Star Trek: The Next Generation." But three years into the series, he quit because he felt it was interfering with his potential film career and he didn't want his future to be "Star Trek" conventions.

"When I was 18, I thought I knew everything," Wheaton says. "The agents and managers I worked with didn't effectively communicate to me all my options."

Or if they did, he wasn't listening.

After years of struggling in forgettable roles, Wheaton has become a writer. He still does voiceover work, but his main creative outlet is writing for his Web log (www.wilwheaton.net). Last year, he published two semi-autobiographical books - "Dancing Barefoot" (O'Reilly, $14.95) and "Just a Geek" (O'Reilly, $24.95).

Phoenix, the most talented of the "Stand by Me" group and the one clearly destined for adult stardom, died of drug-induced heart failure at 23 in 1993.

"I stayed close to River for about six months after filming," Wheaton recalls. "Then he started smoking pot all the time. He was in a great deal of emotional pain, and rather than asserting control over his life, he just decided to numb it."

Corey Feldman may consider himself lucky to have escaped Phoenix's fate.

"During filming, it was clear Corey was headed down a self-destructive path," Wheaton says. "He was angry and really in turmoil. He didn't have a good relationship with his parents."

Feldman, who had been acting since age 3, became most famous for his drug addiction and his 1990 arrest for heroin possession. Now 33, he is sober and focusing on his music career; a stint on "The Surreal Life" put him back in the spotlight. He still appears in third-rate movies. Last year, his second wife, Susie Sprague, gave birth to a son, but Feldman has vowed he will not be raising any actors.

O'Connell, who was 12 when he appeared in "Stand by Me," didn't become a full-time actor until he'd graduated from New York University. Now 33, he has built a solid if unremarkable movie career.

SURVIVING 'TITANIC'

"The best example of a child star transitioning to an adult actor is Leonardo DiCaprio," Maltin says. "I remember seeing him in 'This Boy's Life' and being knocked out. He obviously had a gift from the very beginning. The crisis in his career had less to do with getting older than with suddenly finding himself a teen idol and tabloid darling after 'Titanic.' But he handled it by stepping back for a couple years."

"Home Alone" sensation Macaulay Culkin, now 24, also tried leaving the business for a while. Despite good performances on stage in "Madame Melville" in 2001 and in last year's movie "Saved!," he has yet to find his way as a grown actor.

Of Culkin's situation, Maltin says, "Classically, the child actors who've fared the best through adolescence and young adulthood are those with the most stable home lives." Culkin's parents, of course, had a very public breakup, followed by a vitriolic court case.

Maltin says '30s phenomenon Shirley Temple's home situation was ideal: "There was no bigger child star. She came home to a normal family dinner, a brother. She had to do her chores. When she was on the verge of puberty, her contract was dropped, and then her mother enrolled her in school for the first time in her life. She learned how to deal with her peers, a skill that no doubt helped her later on in her diplomatic career."

"Puberty is difficult for most children, especially puberty in the public eye, because you're seeing their blemishes and awkwardnesses," says agent Meredith Fine, director of the Youth Division, Coast to Coast Talent Group. "People can be cruel. Sometimes I recommend kids take a break, go to school and hone their craft."

However, Fine felt her client Haley Joel Osment , now 16, could handle the pressure and helped him get work in "Secondhand Lions" while his voice was breaking. "It transitioned him from young boy to teen," Fine says. "Now he's looking at projects where he's more adult."

Top British casting director Susie Figgis encourages child actors to take time off. "In England, kids do films for a while, then walk away and go back to school and do ordinarythings," she says. "That gives them time to grow up as human beings. When they come back to acting, they're more rounded and probably have more emotional depth."

Figgis helped launch the careers of Fairuza Balk ("Return to Oz") and Kirsten Dunst ("Interview With the Vampire"). More recently, she cast "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" and the upcoming "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," which stars Johnny Depp.

With Depp's support, Figgis cast Freddie Highmore as Charlie Bucket. The 12-year-old English actor - whose mom is also a talent agent - was showered with awards nominations for his acting opposite Depp in "Finding Neverland."

"Freddie is an extraordinary child," Figgis says. "He has a luminous quality. You can see him thinking. He claims he's going to stop acting, that it's not what he wants to do when he grows up. It could be true. He's got to grow up and go through that ghastly, uncomfortable, voice-breaking age."

'CHOC' FULL

Figgis says she saw "hundreds of thousands of kids" for "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."

"There's a much greater awareness now among children about wanting to get into acting than there was 20 years ago," she says. "There are more kids out there who want to be IT. AnnaSophia Robb [whom Figgis cast as Violet in "Charlie"] is out there to be a star. I asked her, 'Do you really like this?' and she said, 'Yes.'"

"It's all about making the right choices," says Becca Kovacik, a manager at Hofflund/Polone, an L.A. talent agency. "All child actors will go through a rough patch where they're only seen as a child."

She cites her client Rick Schroder, who was 9 when he starred in "The Champ" (1979) and in his late 20s when he made a comeback in "NYPD Blue."

"Child actors mean more at the box office today than they used to," Kovacik says. "Some of them, like Dakota Fanning, are big enough to get movies financed." Kovacik is already preparing Jenna Boyd, 12, for the post-adolescent phase of her career: She will co-star with teens in June's "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants."

Figgis advises child actors who are determined to make the leap to adult roles not to leap at all, but to inch forward.

"Get a really understanding manager or agent, someone genuinely attentive to children," she says. "Then, carefully, choose projects. Combine work with school and go slowly."

Originally published on March 27, 2005 All contents © 2005 Daily News, L.P.