On Screen: “Child Star”
Child Star
Internationally famous as children and, perhaps, has-beens as young adults, talented youngsters can earn enormous salaries that shrivel their parents’ egos with much of their money spent as quickly as it was made. That’s all part of Demi Lovato’s new documentary “Child Star.”
In the opening sequence, Lovato reveals that — as a kid — she decided to be “the next child star,” thinking if Shirley Temple could do it, so could she. Encouraged by her mother, Dianna De la Garza, she began as a performer in beauty pageants.
Despite extreme bullying from her peers at school, she had a determined drive, working on “Barney & Friends” at age six and then landing a plum part on the Disney Channel Original Movie “Camp Rock,” starring the Jonas Brothers.
“We called it Disney High,” she recalls. “We were all about the same age, dating each other. None of us were in high school, so that was our experience of it.”
That’s also when and where she developed a serious eating disorder and suffered extreme exhaustion, juggling personal appearances, a music career, TV show and other projects — which led to a stint in rehab. She shares that stress with Disney co-stars Raven-Symone and Alyson Stoner.
“I looked at my success as my self-worth,” Lovato admits. “I had a really hard time differentiating the two, and I dealt with a lot of need for external validation.”
Asking, “Is the price of fame worth your childhood?” Demi Lovato interviews Drew Barrymore, who starred in “E.T.: The Extraterrestrial” when she was seven, and Christina Ricci, who found being in “Casper” and “The Addams Family” a welcome escape from her dysfunctional home life, referring to her physically violent father as “a failed cult leader.”
Plus there’s former Nickelodeon star Kenan Thompson — who went “from rags to riches and back to rags” — and JoJo Siwa, a tween phenom on “Dance Moms,” who posts roughly 250-300 times a day on social media.
Lovato has made other documentaries, detailing her experience with addiction, body image, self-harm, and other mental health issues, including “Stay Strong” (2012), “Simply Complicated” (2017) and “Dancing With the Devil” (2021).
If this topic intrigues you, find the book “Twinkle, Twinkle , Little Star (but don’t have sex or take the car)” (1984), written by former child star Dickie Moore, in which he interviews Jackie Coogan, Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney, Natalie Wood, and Jane Powell, among others.
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Child Star” is a cautionary, cathartic 6, streaming on Hulu.
Susan Granger reviews sponsored by The Playhouse
Susan Granger is a product of Hollywood. Her natural father, S. Sylvan Simon, was a director and producer at M.G.M. and Columbia Pictures. Her adoptive father, Armand Deutsch, produced movies at M.G.M.
As a child, Susan appeared in movies with Abbott & Costello, Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Margaret O’Brien, and Lassie. She attended Mills College in California, studying journalism with Pierre Salinger, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism.
During her adult life, Susan has been on radio and television as an anchorwoman and movie and drama critic, syndicating her reviews and articles around the world, including Video Librarian. She has appeared on American Movie Classics and Turner Classic Movies. In 2017, her book 150 Timeless Movies was published by Hannacroix Creek Books. Her website is www.susangranger.com.