New documentary about child stars: Drew Barrymore was “high at ten years old”

New documentary about child stars
Drew Barrymore was “high at ten years old”

18.09.2024, 03:20

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In the documentary “Child Star,” which has just been released on the US streaming service Hulu, former child stars such as Drew Barrymore and Demi Lovato shock audiences with drug confessions from their teenage and childhood days.

Former child stars Demi Lovato and Drew Barrymore shock viewers in a documentary with revelations about their new drug past. 32-year-old Lovato himself directed the Hulu documentary “Child Star,” which has just been released on the US streaming service. The former Disney star also interviews other celebrities like Barrymore, who also became world famous at a younger age. Talk show host Barrymore reveals in the documentary: “When I was 10, I got high with my mother's friend.”

Back then, Barrymore said, she thought it was “so cool”. The now 49-year-old comes from a family of actors. When filming began on Steven Spielberg's “ET – The Extra-Terrestrial”, she was only six years old. The film made her a global star. “I started working when I was eleven months old, it was an advert, and after that I never stopped working again, except when my mother put me on the job,” the former child star reveals in “Child Star”.

In the documentary, interviewer Lovato asks aloud whether the child stars or outsiders are to blame for the widespread alcohol and drug addiction among minors at the time. “It's hard to say that you don't blame other people when other people may have given you substances as a child,” argued the actress and musician, who co-directed the program with Nicola Marsh.

Demi Lovato was a Disney star

Many other former child stars also spoke openly to Lovato about what happened at the time. For example, Christina Ricci, now 44, who was only nine years old when she appeared in the hit film “Mermaids Kiss Better,” stressed that she “immediately turned to drugs and alcohol” in her “teenage years.” “I can't remember feeling like there was any other way to be happy,” Ricci said in “Child Star.”

Director Lovato herself enjoyed early successes, including the role of Mitchie Torres in the Disney film “Camp Rock” (2008) and the portrayal of Sonny Munroe in the Disney Channel television series of the same name. She also started a singing career. In the 2017 documentary “Demi Lovato: Simply Complicated” and the documentary series “Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil” she already spoke about trauma from her past and problems with mental health and addiction.