Top Child Stars Destroyed By Fame

Hollywood can be a dream maker,but more often than not,it’s a dream breaker
The pressures put on child stars are enormous,and not all child actors can handle the stress,Here are some of those stars who lost their way

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Macaulay Culkin

Macaulay Culkin got his start in Hollywood in 1988”Rocket Gibraltar,” but rose to stardom in”Home Alone,”the wildly popular & highest-grossing movie of 1990,in which he played darling Kevin McCallister who cleverly fought the bad guys after being left-home alone

Just as Culkin was hitting adolescence in 1995, allegations arose that his father, Kit Culkin, was mismanaging his fortune. A nasty custody battle ensued as his parents greedily fought for control of the child and his fortune. If that won’t destroy a kid, what will?

Culkin was arrested in Oklahoma in 2004 after police found 17.3 grams (just over half an ounce) of pot, along with a couple of prescription drugs for which he had no prescription. He received a one-year deferred sentence on each count and paid $540 in court costs.

Although nearly 60 percent of Americans have smoked pot at one time or another, Culkin was demonized for his drug use, maybe because too many people had trouble separating the flesh-and-blood, 24-year-old human Macaulay from his precocious 8-year-old character Kevin.

2. Edward Furlong

Edward Furlong was born on August 2, 1977, and at the age of 14 played the role of John Connor in “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.”

He won several awards for various roles between 1991 and 1993, and appeared in 1998’s “Pecker” and “American History X.”

When he was just 15, Furlong became romantically involved with his 29-year-old tutor, which led to his emancipation at the age of 16.
After six years together, the couple split in 1998, and a year later she claimed that she had suffered physical abuse by Furlong.

In the 2000s, Furlong’s career headed down a steady decline after numerous allegations of alcohol and drug abuse, as well as several arrests for domestic violence.
He married girlfriend Rachael Bella in 2006, but she filed for divorce in 2009, citing irreconcilable differences...

...and domestic abuse. She later filed a restraining order against him, which he violated twice:later that year, he was arrested for punching her,and in 2011 he was arrested again for violating the protection order.
He was arrested yet again for domestic violence in 2012 after...

...an argument with a female companion at an airport,and still again in 2013 for violence against his girlfriend,Monica Keena,who filed a restraining order that he also violated twice.
In July of 2013,he avoided jail by agreeing to a 90-day stint in rehab,followed by a year’s...

... worth of domestic violence counseling. We’ll see how that pans out.

3. Lindsay Lohan
Born on July 2,1986,Lindsay Lohan began her career in the spotlight as a fashion model at the age of 3.
In 1998,when she was 11,Lohan starred as twins in Disney’s remake of”The Parent Trap.

After 2003’s “Freaky Friday”and 2004’s “Mean Girls,Lohan became a household name and an acclaimed actress.
She also became a massive target for the tabloids and paparazzi. In 2006, Lohan attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and went to rehab for 30 days.
In May that...

...same year,she was arrested for DUI, and two weeks later,she was arrested for cocaine possession,DUI and driving without a license.
Things only got worse from there. In August of 2006,she pleaded guilty to various charges and was sentenced to community service,one day in jail,

3 years of probation and an alcohol education program.She entered rehab later that month, and stayed until October.
In 2010,after missing a DUI hearing, she was sentenced to 90 days in jail,of which she served 14 days, and 90 days of inpatient rehab,from which she was released...

...after just 23 days.
In September of the same year,she entered rehab again. In January 2011,she was charged with the theft of a necklace from a jewelry store and served part of a 120-day jail sentence at home.

In March of 2013,Lohan pleaded no contest to charges that stemmed..

... from a 2012 car accident. She was sentenced to community service, lockdown rehab and 2 years’ probation.
She has been ordered to stay in therapy until her next court appearance in November of 2014. We can only hope for the best for this talented, but troubled, actress.

Amanda Byne

Amanda Bynes was born on April 3 1986. Her acting career began at age 7 with a television commercial for Buncha Crunch.
She found her way into the spotlight shortly after that, appearing in various stage productions, including “Annie,” “The Secret Garden” and...

... “The Sound of Music.”
From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, Bynes was a regular on Nickelodeon’s “All That.”
She starred in “The Amanda Show” from 1999 to 2002, and promptly embarked on a four-year starring role in the WB sitcom, “What I Like About You.”
After starring in..

...several movies between 2003 and 2010,Bynes announced in 2012 that she was retiring from acting.That’s when things got weird,and fast.
In March of 2012,she was ticketed for using her cell phone while driving.A month later,she got a DUI after an accident involving a police car.

...Five months after that, she was charged for two hit-and-run accidents. In September of the same year, she was caught driving on a suspended license. Just ten days later, the same thing.
In May of 2013, she was sentenced to three years’ probation. Shortly thereafter, she was...

...arrested at home for possession of pot, during which she threw a bong out the window of her 36th floor apartment, adding charges of tampering with evidence and reckless endangerment to the list.

It all came to a head in July of 2013, when Bynes started a fire in front of a..

...stranger’s house in Thousand Oaks, and ended up in a mental health treatment center.She was released in December, moved in with her parents and enrolled in the Fashion Institute for Design & Merchandising.
On March 24, 2014,she posted a picture of herself and her parents on...

..Twitter, attending a fashion show in Los Angeles, looking happy and healthy. Hopefully, this signals another happy ending.

4. Britney Spears

Oh, Britney, where to begin?

Britney Jean Spears was born on December 2,1981. At the age of 11,she was cast in “The New Mickey Mouse..

..Club,” joining pop sensations Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake. She was on the show for two seasons.
In December of 1998, she was signed to Jive Records and released her first single, “…Baby One More Time,” which hit the top of the charts late the next year.

The overtly sexual video that accompanied the song signaled the beginning of the criticism that relentlessly followed Spears for the next decade.
The year 2000 found Britney with another top-selling album and a new boyfriend named Justin Timberlake. In 2001,

Britney shed the last vestiges of innocence with her album “Britney.” She and JT broke up in 2002.
The famous Madonna kiss occurred in 2003, leaving no doubt that the virginal Britney Spears from “The New Mickey Mouse Club” was gone forever.
In January 2004, Britney spent two...

days married to her childhood pal Jason Alexander, and nine months later, remarried backup dance Kevin Federline, who left his pregnant girlfriend for her.
Two years later,after the birth of her first son,she was caught driving with the infant on her lap. She and Federline had...

...another son in 2006, divorced in 2007, and Britney eventually lost custody of her two sons. Federline, who turned out to be a pretty okay guy, joined her on tour a few years later so that she could spend time with the children.

After her divorce, Britney went through a...

... well-publicized party girl phase, performed disastrously at the MTV Music Awards, visited rehab a few times and shaved her head while the paparazzi snapped photos.
Spears,seems to have wised up and moved on from her turbulent younger years. She became an “X Factor”...

..judge in 2012 and in 2013 released her 8th studio album, “Britney Jean,” which was met with mixed reviews.

5. Drew Barrymore
Born in 1975 into a long lineage of famous actors,Drew Barrymore was destined for a career on the silver screen.
She appeared in a dog food commercial

..at the age of eleven months and made her film debut in “Altered States” when she was five.
A year later, she was cast as Gertie in Stephen Spielberg’s blockbuster movie “ET,” which made her the most famous child actress of the time.
After her alcoholic father John Barrymore...

... left her and her mother when she was nine, Drew became a regular fixture at New York’s most famous nightclub, Studio 54, tagging along with her hard-partying mother.
She started smoking cigarettes that year and was drinking regularly by age 11, smoking weed at 12 and doing...

... cocaine at 13, making a strong case for the gateway drug theory.
When she was 14, Barrymore entered rehab, after which she attempted suicide. She was legally emancipated at the age of 15, moved into her own apartment and got a job at a coffee shop.

After appearing nude on...

.... the cover of “Interview Magazine” when she was 17 and posing naked for “Playboy” at 19, her old friend Steven Spielberg gave her a quilt for her 20th birthday along with a note that said, “Cover up!” He included copies of her nude pictures, which had been doctored by his....

.... design team so that she was wearing clothes.
Barrymore cleaned up her act in her twenties, and while she says she still drinks moderately, she has found balance in her life. She is now a highly successful feature film actress and producer.

6. Shia LaBeouf

Shia LaBeouf, who rocketed to mainstream fame in the “Transformers” movies as Sam Witwicky, was born in 1986 and grew up suffering mental and verbal abuse by his father, a Vietnam veteran.
To escape his unhappy home, he performed standup comedy in clubs at the...

...age of ten, describing the contents of his act as a “50 year old mouth on a 10 year old kid.”
In 2000,LaBeouf was cast as Louis Stevens on Disney’s TV show “Even Stevens.”He won his first movie role in 2003’s “Holes,”and just two years later, at the age of 19, his troubles...

... began.
His first serious brush with the law resulted in a charge of assault with a deadly weapon after he threatened his neighbor, who was blocking his path to the garage, and rammed the neighbor’s car with his own vehicle.
Then, in 2007, he was arrested for criminal...

... trespassing after he refused to leave a Walgreens drug store after being kicked out by a security guard. Luckily for him, those charges were dropped.

But then, in 2008, he was charged with unlawful smoking and failed to appear in court. A warrant was issued and he ended up..

... paying a hefty fine. Later that year, he was involved in a car accident that crushed his hand, resulting in three surgeries. Although the accident wasn’t his fault, he was charged with a DUI and his license was suspended for a year.
More bad luck followed in 2013, when La...

... Beouf was accused of plagiarism stemming from three graphic novels he had created.

7.Demi Lovato

Born in 1992,Demi Lovato was just seven years old when she was cast alongside Selena Gomez in”Barney and Friends.”
She hit the big time in the original Disney movie “Camp Rock,”

which also featured the Jonas Brothers.
Her portrayal of Mitchie Torres on that show led to a starring role as Sonny on the Disney hit “Sonny with a Chance” when Lovato was 15.
Already a TV star and national singing sensation, Lovato released her debut album, “Don’t Forget,” in..

... 2008 and went on tour with The Jonas Brothers, who co-wrote most of the songs on the album.
Lovato started using cocaine during the tour, and admits that she couldn’t go more than an hour without it. She smuggled it on planes and did lines in her seat if her neighbors were...

... asleep, or she headed to the bathroom to get her fix.
Despite her drug problem, Lovato was concerned about the world and motivated enough to embrace philanthropy. She recorded a charity single with Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus, and The Jonas Brothers in 2009, with the proceeds..

... benefiting environmental charities.
In 2010,Lovato realized she had a big problem. She went into rehab with “physical and emotional issues,”and was treated for bulimia,self-mutilation, and drugs and alcohol.She was diagnosed as bipolar during her rehab stint.
Now sober and...

... trying to help other young people, Lovato detailed her experiences in her 2013 autobiography, “Staying Strong,” which also provides young readers with “lessons, meditations, reflections, and daily goals.”
an ambulance rushed Demi Lovato to the hospital in 2018 after an...

...apparent drug overdose. And she's made some major changes since then.