I’m reasonably sure Alex Winter is fine about being the one in Bill and Ted who isn’t Keanu Reeves. Showbiz Kids is part of the reason why I think that. The latest in a stream of fascinating documentaries taking in subjects as various as the downloading revolution (2013’s Downloaded), government secrecy (2018’s The Panama Papers) and Frank Zappa (2020’s Zappa), his latest takes in the landscape of the movie brat, the child star, focusing not so much on the obvious benefits as the near-bottomless downside. Like his earlier docs, this is well informed, humane, intelligent and thoughtful.
In interviews publicising his films Winter comes across as someone who is fulfilled in his work, and from reading the screen credits, and watching the doc, it’s obvious that once again Winter is hands-on. As well as producing, writing and directing, he does the research and interviewing. This really helps the movie, especially when talking to the likes of Milla Jovovich, one of many former child stars he interviews. Winter can empathise – he was a child star himself, the son of dancer parents who was on Broadway as a teenager.
In the familiar clips-and-talking-heads format, Winter first sets the scene with a roll call of child stars who made it to the other side – Garland and Rooney, Elizabeth Taylor and Natalie Wood, Ron Howard and Scarlett Johansson, before diving back to a child star almost no one will remember.
Diana Serra Cary made her name in the silent era. “I went to work at two,” says the actor known then as Baby Peggy, looking back on her life of nearly 100 years before. “The life of a child was not my life.” A huge star until aged seven, her career ended abruptly when her father – angry that he couldn’t get his hands on her money – broke her contract and stopped her performing.
These are the twin poles – the made-it-throughs and the fell-by-the-waysides. His interviewees, for the most part, sit somewhere in between. Mara Wilson, who was the star of Matilda and now seems happy to be mostly out of it all. Henry Thomas, child star of ET – “I pissed my pants the first time I was on stage” – who only went into acting because it got him out of piano lessons. (We get to see, once again, his famous audition for ET, which concludes with Spielberg’s delighted/astonished off-camera remark, “OK, kid, you got the job”). Cameron Boyce, the Disney Channel star whose entire adolescence took place on camera. Jovovich – “I hated it, to be honest… I hated going on set” – who became a child actor because her mother, something of a Soviet acting star, wanted to recapture past glory, even if only at second hand.
Wil Wheaton, star of Stand by Me. Jada Pinkett Smith, performing from the age of three. Todd Bridges of Diff’rent Strokes. Evan Rachel Wood – “It’s a lot of time alone… on set”.
In archive we’re reminded of the likes of Sue Lyon, 14 when she was cast as a sex nymphet in Kubrick’s Lolita. Of Brooke Shields, 12 when she shed her clothes in the controversial Blue Lagoon. Natalie Portman’s debut aged 11 with Jean Reno in 1994’s Leon. Christopher Walken, even, pops up in old interview footage talking about being an extra with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in 1950.
It’s well chosen archive but the real USP of the film is the modern-day interview, with Winter getting frank responses to questions that probe but don’t pry – Jovovich is particularly open about acting (she wishes she was better) and being exploited sexually. Thomas talks about how unprepared he was for the celebrity that came with ET, and how unprepared he was when it went away. Wheaton is particularly outspoken on becoming a teen idol after Stand by Me – “I hated all that stuff” – and how uneasy he was when the bullying by various members of his extended family suddenly morphed into a phoney adulation.
The money and the weird power dynamic of a kid earning buckets more than their parents, the icky sexual stuff – you can hear the years of therapy, particularly from Wood, Wheaton and Wilson. But what comes through most is the sense of a loss of childhood and the loss of self – none of these child stars ever knew who their real friends were because all everyone wanted was a piece of the screen version.
Threaded through, and the least successful bit of it all, are a couple of modern case studies. Melanie Slater – not a stage mom, she emphasises – dragging her son Marc around Hollywood during pilot season. Demi Singleton, who’s been in Broadway shows since she was this high and is now still doing the rounds, waiting for the break that is bound to come. (Since this film came out she’s played Sabrina Williams in the Will Smith movie King Richard – so it’s happened.)
There is, in a sense, nothing that you haven’t heard before but Winter (never on camera, but heard now and again) has done a good job marshalling his interviewees and building his thesis – child stardom is weird and, apart from money, you wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy.
Showbiz Kids – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
