Hayden Panetierre and the child actors who were fed through Hollywood’s grist mill

Jackie Coogan was only nine years old when he became one of the world’s first child movie stars.

He was the titular kid in Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid, playing a character who had been abandoned by his desperate mother, attached to a note which read “Please love and care for this orphan child”. He is eventually found by Chaplin’s The Tramp and together, they embark on all sorts of hustles and adventures.

Coogan spent the next decade busy at work in the burgeoning industry, appearing in the likes of Oliver Twist, Circus Days, Little Robinson Crusoe and Huckleberry Finn.

Over his child acting career, he earnt up to $US4 million (close to $140 million today), and soon after he reached adulthood, he discovered his mother and stepfather had spent almost all of it, including on indulgences such as diamonds and furs.

At the age of 23, he sued them, and according to a 1938 article in Life magazine, his mother’s defence was “No promises were ever made to give Jackie anything” to which his stepfather added, “Every dollar a kid earns before he is 21 belongs to his parents, Jackie will not get a cent of his earnings”.

By the end of litigation, Coogan ended up with just $US126,000 ($177,500) of the money he earnt growing up on film sets.

This egregious case of parental neglect and greed actually led to action by the state of California, which passed in 1939 the Child Actor’s Bill, which is nicknamed the Coogan Act. It sets out that 15 per cent of a child actor’s earnings must be kept in a trust, and also mandated maximum work hours, schooling and the like.

Coogan was the first famous case of a child actor exploited by his parents, but Hollywood history is rife with eager young tykes, often pushed by the adults in their life, chasing stardom in the dream factory.

Exposed to media scrutiny, fame, adult parties, drugs and alcohol from a young age, few of them come out relatively unscathed, as far as we know, and some don’t come out at all.

Hayden Panetierre died yesterday at the age of 36 and while the official cause of death is pending a full autopsy report, People magazine reported that emergency workers were overheard saying “overdose”.

Panetierre’s breakthrough role came at the age of 17 in the 2006 series Heroes, and went on to be in the Nashville TV show as well as in the Scream movies. But she had already been working a long time when Heroes hit.

Panetierre made her screen debut at 11 months old, and by the time she became a regular on US soap One Life to Live at the age of five, she had already appeared in 50 TV commercials.

When she was 10, she starred opposite Denzel Washington in Remember the Titans, and at 13 played Calista Flockhart’s unbeknownst secret daughter on Ally McBeal. When Heroes rolled around, she was already a veteran.

Panetierre published her memoirs, This Is Me: A Reckoning, in May and on the press tour, she said this was the first time she has felt OK being candid about her tumultuous life.

Among the pages were horrifying stories, including a TV executive at NBC who kissed her on the lips when she was still a teenager, or being asked to get into a bed with a much older celebrity when she was 19. She was given a “happy pill” by one of her reps at the time at 16, which Panetierre said ended up being a gateway drug into her addictions.

She wrote in her memoir the effect of acting out heavy emotions as a child, and how she was rewarded when she accessed that pain for the screen.

“Grown-ups gave me positive attention when, as an actor, I failed, got sick, screamed and cried, killed, grieved and suffered. Reality merged with my imagination and burrowed into my core memories, where all my shame and trauma lived.

“Is it any wonder whether — unintentionally — I’ve brought on my traumas because I’m wired to think they’re good for me?”

She wrote that she accepted pain was part of the process of her job.

Panetierre had been managed by her mother, Lesley Vogel, from the time she was a baby to when she was 19.

In her memoirs, she wrote about her mother’s opinions were what mattered the most, and that she had been “groomed” to be a child star.

When she severed her professional relationship with Vogel at 19 and expressed a desire for them to just be mum-and-daughter, her mother allegedly replied, “You owe me”.

She wrote, “The fact she didn’t want to, didn’t care to, have a relationship with me was a tough pill to swallow”. At the time of the book’s release, Panetierre had been estranged from Vogel.

The even more devastating aspect to Panetierre’s recollections of child stardom, the after-effects of it and the strained relationships, was that it is all too familiar.

Some of them had the added burden of being responsible for their whole family’s financial survival, which is a lot to put on a child. Britney Spears wrote about the pressure of being the breadwinner for her family from a young age, an arrangement that was then formalised in a crushing 13-year conservatorship, a story that is now one of the great cautionary tales of the 21st century.

Jennette McCurdy, the former child star in the likes of Nickelodeon shows such as Zoey 101 and iCarly, really caught attention in 2022 with her memoirs, the spikily named I’m Glad My Mom Died.

In the book, she recounted the very strict control her mother, Debra, had over all aspects of her life. Debra dictated what McCurdy ate, when she took showers, gave her breast exams and constantly compared her to her co-stars.

When she felt uncomfortable at work (there have been many scandals associated with how young actors were treated at Nickelodeon under a previous manager) including being photographed in a bikini or being encouraged to drink alcohol, her mother didn’t intervene, and told it was the cost of success in the industry.

Even as a kid, McCurdy did it all to please her mother, who had been prevented from her acting dreams from her parents.

“Everything’s going to be better. Mum will finally be happy, her dream has come true,” McCurdy recalled thinking when she was cast on iCarly.

Macauley Culkin, arguably the most famous child star of the late 1980s and 1990s has been candid about his abusive father who had resented his career success. Despite telling his dad that was tired and needed a break from work, his father kept pushing him to continue.

He’s been estranged from him since his parents separated in 1995. According to Culkin, none of his six siblings have wanted anything to do with their dad. He emancipated himself from his parents at 16.

A third-generation actor, Drew Barrymore is one of the child actors who survived to establish a stable career as an adult in the industry, but that path took a perilous journey.

She was pouring Bailey’s liqueur over her ice-cream when she was seven years old, had a drinking problem by the time she was 12, and a drug addiction a year later.

During her childhood, her father, John Barrymore, was a violent alcoholic and her mother, had little patience for traditional parenting. She was going to adult parties with her mother when she was still in the single digits, including the infamous Studio 54.

When she was 13, she was checked into a hospital and treated for drug and alcohol addiction. She thought her expiration date would be at 25.

Daniel Radcliffe’s parents were initially hesitant about letting him audition for Harry Potter because they both were child actors and had some understanding of what that life was like.

But even having “normal” parents rather than overenthusiastic stage ones, Radcliffe still wasn’t prepared for all the pressure and scrutiny of being The Boy Who Lived.

In 2019, Radcliffe revealed that the attention that came from being a child actor in one of the world’s biggest franchises led him to alcohol, as he became paranoid (or perhaps not) that everyone was watching him all the time.

“In my case, the quickest way to forget about the fact that you’re being watched is to get very drunk, and then as you get very drunk, you become aware that ‘Oh, people are watching more now because now I’m very drunk, so I should probably drink more to ignore that more’.”

He has been sober since 2010.

From Lindsay Lohan and Corey Feldman to Jonathan Brandis and Gary Coleman, the path of the troubled child star is well-worn.

There are familiar beats to those stories, of the intensity of attention both good and bad, the cycle of wanting and needing external validation, and not being able to recognise the toxicity of that. The exposure to drugs and alcohol, sex and sexual predators.

Some survive like Lohan, others, like Brandis, didn’t. Even those who seemingly came through without too much drama, like Natalie Portman, have stories of their own.

Perhaps the most famous and most tragic child star is also one of the most famous faces of the 20th century: Judy Garland.

Garland was given drugs by her mother by the time she was nine, so that she could perk up to perform, a practice that was continued by the studio, MGM, that held her contract.

MGM also maintained vice-like grip over all aspects of her life, down to celebrating her 16th birthday two months early because that was the time that worked for the studio – and she wasn’t allowed to eat her own cake.

“My life was a combination of absolute chaos and absolute solitude,” she later said.

Garland struggled her whole life with addiction and body image issues, and never shook off all the trauma of being a profitable product for a corporation.

She overdosed on barbiturates in London, slumped on a toilet. She was 47.