The 10 Most Shocking Roles Played By Former Child Stars

Image via Complex Original

Before the world got re-acquainted with Neil Patrick Harris in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, he had't done anything major since his performance as the boy doctor in the vanilla TV comedy, Doogie Howser, M.D. Harris was a pretty by-the-numbers child actor in the role, complete with the requisite quick wit and charm.

Then suddenly he resurfaced for many in 2004 with Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, playing an over-the-top, psychotic version of himself. Watching this fictionalized version of Harris maniacally steal the show while strung out on E was a shock for people who last remembered him as a pre-pubescent doctor. By destroying his former image, Harris breathed new life into his career, which soon led to a starring role in How I Met your Mother, and numerous other projects.

With that one shocking role, Harris carefully navigated a show biz comeback that most former child actors can’t even dream of. Out of everyone on this list, he is one of the only ones to turn his shocking role into a second wind.

On the surface, Scott Schwartz may not be a household name, but you’ll instantly recognize him with these three words: A Christmas Story. OK, one more word: flagpole. Got it now?

Schwartz played Flick, who famously got his tongue stuck to a frozen flagpole. It turns out that ol’ Scotty put that famous organ to use once again in the '90s, but this time it was in a porno movie, aptly titled Scotty’s X-Rated Adventure.

The plot of the movie, if you can call it that, involved Schwartz trying to learn about the porn industry from a busty star of the business. She agreed to teach him under one condition—that he attend one of her orgies without having sex with anyone. Schwartz actually had an extended run in the porn industry in the ‘90s, playing roles like EMT Worker #2 and Agent Big Knob in movies like Flashpoint and Booby Trap.

It seems like a lifetime ago at this point, but in 1998 Lindsay Lohan broke onto the acting scene as an adorable child actor by playing a set of twins in The Parent Trap. At the time she seemed like a ginger-haired version of the Olsen Twins, but contained within one person. But as we have seen so many times with young talent, the allure of Hollywood proved too much for Lohan, and she soon began to melt down in grand style before the judgmental eyes of the American public.

Despite her behavior becoming more and more TMZ-worthy every week, she was still considered a star-in-the-making in the mid-‘00s. That is until I Know Who Killed Me hit theaters. In this movie, Lohan returned to her roots by playing a pair of twins, but this time one of them is a sleazy stripper. This is the end of Lohan’s career as a respectable actress.

The role in the terrible film destroyed her credibility. There was a promising start to her career, but bad decisions, both personally and professionally, wound up landing her a role that was so similar to her breakthrough in The Parent Trap in some ways, it was an easy symbol for her destruction.

The world first came to know Christian Bale as the rosy-cheeked scamp in Steven Spielberg’s underrated WWII drama Empire of the Sun. In the movie he plays a young  boy who becomes a prisoner of war in Shanghai. He then went on to star in more pint-sized roles, like big screen adaptations of Treasure Island and, most notably, Newsies. The optimism and joy of his earlier work was destroyed, though, when Bale took on the role of Patrick Bateman in Mary Harron's adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho.

It was a complete shock to see Bale—who spent most of Newsies frolicking and jazz-handsing his way into our hearts—covered in blood, brandishing a chainsaw, and chasing a defenseless woman through a nightmarish apartment complex. Some people might not remember it now, but American Psycho hit at a time when his star wasn't yet set in Hollywood, and he was still trying to break away from his child actor past. While most examples on this list are obvious fails, American Psycho is the movie that propelled Bale into the upper echelon of the movie business. Because he's fantastic in it.

Daniel Radcliffe ruled an entire generation of child actors by playing the boy wizard himself, Harry Potter, in eight blockbuster films from 2001-2011. But like most adolescent stars, he was eager to try on some adult roles. He made his first foray into the larger world of acting by starring in a stage production of Equus in 2007, where he famously stripped completely nude for theatergoers and Potter fans to drool over.

Radcliffe’s explicit nudity drummed up more publicity and controversy than anyone expected. Now, he didn’t go full-on Caligula for audiences, but it was still plenty shocking for an actor mainly associated with Happy Meals and action figures.

Believe it or not, there was a time when the American public would actually sit in front of the TV by the millions to watch the comedic chops of Tony Danza in his inexplicably popular ‘80s sitcom, Who’s the Boss?. But aside from sub-par laughs, people also witnessed a young Alyssa Milano light up the screen as Samantha Micelli, who would eventually become the most popular part of the show.

But while she was sweet and innocent in Who’s the Boss, Milano’s career soon degenerated into a series of cheap movie releases where she attempted to shed the very image that she'd built her career on. It culminated in 1995, when she starred in the direct-to-video dud, Embrace of the Vampire, where she infamously paraded around the screen in the nude.

If Milano was so desperate to do away with her child actress image, surely she could'vd done better than a movie that was almost exclusively rented by a generation looking to see her naked.

With adorable appearances in otherwise dark dramas like Man on Fire and War of the Worlds, it was only a matter of time before Dakota Fanning took on a role where the film's brutality centered around her. Enter 2007’s controversial indie movie, Hounddog, where Fanning plays a young girl named Lewellen. She's growing up in the rural South with a dysfunctional family and creepy neighbors right out of Deliverance.

The film's infamous for the graphic rape scene, where Fanning is attacked by a much older boy. The camera fixates on her face during the attack, making for a supremely horrible viewing experience.

The story of Jaimee Foxworth is one littered with child actor clichés. It all begins with her becoming a young star on the ‘80s/’90s sitcom, Family Matters. As Judy Winslow, Foxworth was the requisite cute child on the show, there to have audiences laughing each because of her precocious comebacks and cherubic smile. Unfortunately for Foxworth, Jaleel White took all of her attention when Steve Urkel became the show’s breakout character.

There was seemingly no room for Foxworth in the cast with White around, and after four seasons on the show, Judy went upstairs one episode and never came back down. She'd been written off via the Chuck Cunningham apporach, and audiences never saw her again. For years no one heard or saw much of Foxworth publicly—until she surfaced some years later as the porn star “Crave.”

From 2000-2002, Foxworth was a regular in the porn scene as she dealt with financial and personal drug problems off camera. Since then, she's straightened her life out, and appeared in 2009 in The Jeffersons: A XXX Parody, but without fucking anyone.

At 16, Lisa Bonet made her mainstream debut as Denise Huxtable in one of the most adored sitcoms of all time, The Cosby Show. From her scene-stealing sarcasm and beauty, you could tell that Bonet would have a future beyond being a teenage actress. In an ill-fated attempt at breaking the mold of her underage role, Bonet starred in the 1987 thriller Angel Heart when she was just 20 years old.

Beyond being an effective horror movie, Angel Heart is memorable for the graphic sex scenes between Bonet and the film's protagonist Harry Angel, played by Micky Rourke at this height of his handsomeness. The sweaty sex was all the more remarkable because Bonet was still working on Cosby at the time.

It's just another example of young actresses being demonized for expressing confidence with their bodies (not to mention the subtext of racism because of the interracial romance).

Macaulay Culkin is both the best and worst example of what fame can do to a child actor. After making some serious bank with the Home Alone franchise, Culkin was a boy millionaire and seemingly had a one-way ticket to the A-list. However, typecasting, bad career moves, and personal problems relegated him to the '90s nostalgia bin.

In an attempt to change his image, he traded in the humor and likeability and of his younger days for a starring role in the dark drug drama, Party Monster. Portraying infamous club promoter Michael Alig, Culkin is almost unrecognizable in this role, as he delves into the seedy party scene of New York in the early '90s, a world filled with drugs, sex, and murder.

This low-budget Z-movie did nothing for his career, only serving to make his post-Home Alone years even more sad.