DAILY DOSE OF HOPE – BLOG – NAIMA LETT
Former Child Star. Rough Week.
© NaimaLett.com/blog

© AP, Former child star Amanda Bynes in court

And you think you’ve had a rough week?
Rough is relative, isn’t it?

Drug arrest, alleged harassment, leaked party pics, twitter wars.
Some say former child star, Amanda Bynes, now 27, is mid-melt-down.
Maybe she could use some support, some prayers.

The Amanda I Met

When I met Amanda on Lifetime’s Living Proof starring Harry Connick Jr. about 5 years ago, she was professional and kind. We didn’t have a lot of scenes together, (my main ones were with Harry and Regina King), but Amanda seemed solid. She kept to her crew mostly, but she understood her role, as so many others, in bringing celebrity to this heart project executive produced by Renée Zellweger.

Child Professional

Amanda’s been a professional, working actress since the age of 7. By age 10, she got her break on Nickelodeon’s hit All That, which garnered her spin-off, The Amanda Show by age 13. She did films like What a Girl Wants, She’s the Man, and Hairspray.

But what happens when the roles slow down, as they inevitably will? How do you make the transition from working child star to not-so-working adult actress? Amanda publicly announced that she was retiring from acting a couple of years ago, and that’s when all the drama seemed to begin to unfold: arrests, drug accusations, strange pictures, on and on.

An Insider’s View

A very interesting essay, 7 Reasons Child Stars Go Crazy (An Insider’s Perspective), was released yesterday by fellow child star, Mara Wilson (Mrs. Doubtfire, Nine Months), now 25.

Mara tries to give some explanation as to why “Not many child stars make it out of Hollywood alive or sane, and at any given time there are at least three former ones having very public breakdowns.”

She explains that many of the stars’ parents can’t or won’t help them, the kids gain then lose love and attention, many are sexually exploited, they’re not able to go through normal teen rebellion (seeing as so many paychecks are depending on them), and they can’t escape their own fame. What was really telling is when Mara said that she’d recommend former stars just quit acting, but they don’t know what else to do. She recommends getting an education as a way of empowerment and building a future beyond vanquishing fame.

Chasing Fame

Last week, we kicked off a lively discussion about Amanda’s and Mara’s generation, the Millennials, based on Time Magazine’s May 20th cover story, “Millennials: The Me Me Me Generation”. In my blog response, Are Millennials Lazy, Entitled and Selfish? Is That True?, we talk about the generations’ desire for celebrity and fame.

But what happens when fame is fleeting? What happens when you give your all to it and lose everything else? Jesus asks it this way, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?” Mark 8:36. There has to be more to life than desperately trying to keep our faces in front of the camera and posting questionable pics on Twitter.

Could Happen to Anyone

As a family of faith, we accomplish nothing by standing in judgment. We have a calling to pray. This could happen to anyone. Besides, honestly, I know just as many Christians chasing fame as I do non-Christians. The difference is the Christians are doing so in the name of Jesus and expecting God to blow them up for His Name’s sake.

So, Lord, help us all. That’s my prayer today.
Lord, help us all.

On bended knee in the LaLa,
Naima

Rev. Naima Lett, D.MIN, ABD
Author of coming release Confessions of a Hollywood Christian

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