Jeff B. Cohen, Esq.
The Hollywood machine loves a fresh-faced, button-nosed, apple-cheeked, sassy child performer. Once that precocious kid dares to grow up, however, the system is not kind.
The unfortunate trend is that for every well-adjusted former child star, there are two troubled Coreys. Behind them is a staggering rogues gallery of has-beens such as Lindsay Lohan, Dustin Diamond, and so on, with each of them doing one or more of the following: falling down drunk, overdosing on drugs, crashing a car, committing a crime and/or making a porno. Or they end up stuck in a purgatory of appearing in one reality TV show after another. At worst, their demons lead them to an early demise.
Happily, however, some child stars, such as Natalie Portman, Anna Paquin, and Leonardo DiCaprio, do transition smoothly into acclaimed adult acting careers. Others venture into different fields altogether.
We assembled a list of child stars that have moved on from acting (for the most part) to achieve success in other fields—a handful still in the entertainment world. Click ahead to see where they are now.
Best known as: Chunk from the 1985 kids’ adventure flick “The Goonies.”
What he’s been up to since then: Now 37, Cohen is a Beverly Hills entertainment lawyer and a partner at Cohen Gardner. In 2008, the Hollywood Reporter named him one of the top 35 entertainment executives under 35. He also writes articles for Backstage, covering business and legal trends in the entertainment industry.
You can still catch him in: Cohen hasn’t acted since 1991, but he was known to do the Truffle Shuffle on the sidelines of games while an undergrad at University of California, Berkeley.
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