Child actor

A child actor or child actress is a child acting on stage, television or in movies. An adult who began their acting career as a child may also be called a child actor or a "former child actor". Closely associated terms include teenage actor or teen actor, which refer to an actor who gained popularity as a teenager. Many child actors find themselves struggling to adapt as they become adults, mainly due to typecasting. For example, several of the popular Our Gang kids of the 1920s and 1930s, including Mickey Daniels, George "Spanky" McFarland, and Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer, struggled as adults and never achieved sustained adult acting careers. Macaulay Culkin and Lindsay Lohan are two more recent child actors who eventually experienced much difficulty with the fame they acquired at an early age. A relatively small number of child actors have gone on to successful acting careers as adults; for example Mickey Rooney, Jackie Cooper, Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Blake, Dean Stockwell, Jodie Foster, Christian Bale, Drew Barrymore, Saoirse Ronan and Natalie Portman. Other child actors have gone on to successful careers in other fields, including ambassador Shirley Temple, director Ron Howard, politicians Lech and Jarosław Kaczyński, James Jebbia, and singer Jenny Lewis.