Are you one of the many sci-fi and comic book geeks who’d be more interested in Push were it not for Dakota Fanning? Sure, the precocious child star is now a teen actress (she’s about to turn 15), yet that probably makes you even more worried about her appearance in the movie. But what can you do? She’s literally everywhere this week – voicing the title character in the animated Coraline and starring in two new video releases, Hounddog and The Secret Life of Bees, both of which were released Tuesday. In the tradition of child actors continuing careers into adolescence, it’s only a matter of time before she ruins a movie that would have been better without her.
We’ll have to wait until this weekend to see if that time is now, with Push, but in the meantime let’s take a look at some of the past offenders in this tradition. Most of the following former child actors (our definition: actors that began their career below the age of 13) have done great things in their adulthood, but each has done at least one film that could have been better without him or her. You may disagree with some of these picks, and you may think we’ve forgotten some (was Christian Bale really the worst part of The Dark Knight? did Mary-Kate Olsen’s disturbing kiss with Ben Kingsley take away from The Wackness?), so do share your own thoughts on former child stars below. We just ask that you keep your comments somewhat tasteful and law-abiding.
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This is the first in what will be a series of posts examining the artistic life cycles of Oscar winners who failed to find continued mainstream success after taking home the statuette. If you have suggestions for stars or filmmakers that you’d like to see profiled, let us know in the comments.
Roberto Benigni swang from general obscurity in the United States to media darling following his Academy Award for Life Is Beautiful. But what’s happened to him since? He was only the second filmmaker since Sir Laurence Olivier to direct himself in an Oscar-winning performance. That’s a long way to go for someone who had only been seen here in Blake Edwards’ terrible Son of the Pink Panther and as a sex-obsessed cabbie in Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth. While we love the underdog success story, we also love the fall from grace, and we’re in search of the crater that Benigni must have left somewhere.
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