19 Ex-Child Stars Who Lost Their Fortune
Child stars have it rough but given that we often hear about professional and financial struggles in their later years, encountering fame at a young age can often appear to be more of a curse than a blessing.
These 23 child stars have shared their unfortunate stories of losing their fortune.
1.Aaron Carter claimed that he made over $200 million before the age of 18.
2.Lindsay Lohan reportedly earned upwards of $28 million at the height of her movie career.
From Parent Trap to Mean Girls, Lindsay Lohan was undoubtedly a ubiquitous force in Hollywood at one point. However, her spending habits, legal troubles, and battle with addiction led her to procure significant debt, Business Insider reported.
3.Christy Carlson Romano was a pivotal figure during Disney’s reign in the mid-2000s, from starring alongside Shia LaBeouf on Even Stevens to voicing the ever-iconic titular character on Kim Possible.
4.Jaimee Foxworth’s role on Family Matters basically vanished without explanation. She played Judy Winslow, the youngest of the three Winslows. However, once the writers introduced Steve Urkel, Judy Winslow was written out completely and nobody really acknowledged her absence.
Foxworth began modeling and acting at the age of 5. She continued to see a bit more success in the years after Family Matters, including a stint in the music industry with S.H.E., an R&B group she formed with her two sisters who released their debut album through Shaquille O’Neal’s T.W.IsM imprint. As her family’s financial burdens began to mount and Foxworth battled with depression and struggled with alcohol use, she admitted that she went broke. Ultimately, this led to a brief stint in the adult film industry to help her generate some sort of quick income.
5.While Cole and Dylan Sprouse became icons as the main characters on The Suite Life Of Zack And Cody, the circumstances surrounding their entry into showbiz were much more dire.
6.Dustin Diamond is best known as Screech from Saved By The Bell but his success was unfortunately limited to the '90s teen sitcom.
Diamond struggled to find work following the success of Saved By The Bell. Though he did land a few gigs on shows like The Munsters Today and Getting By, he wasn’t able to find a steady job. In 2001, he filed for bankruptcy in California and subsequently launched a crowdfunding campaign to help save his house from foreclosure. He began selling t-shirts that read, “I paid 15.00 dollars to save Screeech's house” along with his face. Diamond revealed that he was aiming to sell roughly 30,000 shirts to raise $250,000. He passed away on February 1st, 2021.
7.Jackie Coogan is considered the first child star and became one of the biggest actors by the time he was 17. Unfortunately, like many other child stars on this list, his parents blew his cash before he was even the legal age.
After working alongside the legendary Charlie Chaplin in The Kid, Coogan earned nearly $4 million, which, with inflation, comes to nearly $62 million. California law, at the time, didn’t have any safeguards in place for minors in the entertainment industry, so all of his earnings went to his parents. However, following the death of his father, he realized that his fortune had been spent and he sued his mother and manager. Ultimately, this led to the creation of the Coogan Law, a legislation that protects child actors and their earnings until they are 18 and ensures that 20% of their earnings are placed in a trust.
8.Jena Malone took on critical supporting roles as a child actor in movies like 1996’s Bastard Out Of California and 1998’s Stepmom. But even with critical acclaim in Blockbuster hits, she wound up suing her mother over mismanaged funds.
According to the Los Angeles Times, 14-year-old Jena sued her mother, Debbie Malone, over the mismanagement of her funds, which she alleged resulted in $20,000 in back taxes she owed the IRS. She filed a suit in Superior Court, claiming that her mother blew nearly $1 million and left her college fund depleted. Under Coogan Law, Jena argued that she should’ve had at least $360,000 in her trust instead of the $80,000 that was left in the account.
9.Willie Aames saw success as a child actor throughout the 1970s and eventually kept that momentum high throughout the 1980s. His role as Tommy Bradford on Eight Is Enough was a lucrative gig that he said earned him roughly $1 million annually.
Unfortunately, the well ran dry and, as he explained in 2010 to HuffPost, he was “virtually homeless.” “At the very peak [of Eight Is Enough] I was making a little over a million dollars a year," he said. "Then suddenly there was no job, no bank account, no wife, no child. I never dreamt it could happen that fast. I found myself virtually homeless. I stayed with friends when I could, slept in parking garages, or slept in the park. It was shameful. I remember laying underneath the bushes thinking, 'Is this how it turns out? Is this how my life really turns out?'" Though he later left the entertainment industry, he made his return in 2016.
10.Between a successful run on Nickelodeon and a musical career, Drake Bell was a young heartthrob on the scene. Despite his success, he found himself in financial turmoil during his adult years and was reportedly $581,000 in debt.
Legal documents obtained by TMZ revealed that he owed $1.597 million, though his house was valued at $1.575 million. By that time, his income had decreased significantly. In 2012, he earned $408,000, while the following year, he made around $14,000. At that time, he also documented that his monthly income amounted to $2,820, and his overhead was about $19,000. On top of the taxes he owed, Bell found himself in grave debt.
11.Erin Moran is best known as Joanie Cunningham from Happy Days and its spin-off Joanie Loves Chachi. Unfortunately, once both shows were canceled, Moran fell into bad times.
Moran’s latter years were riddled with financial burdens. She found herself suffering from depression after both shows ended and found trouble landing jobs. Moran’s California home underwent foreclosure, and she struggled to find a permanent residence thereafter. According to Daily Mail, she and her husband, Steven Fleischmann, primarily survived off of residual payments from Happy Days that came after she and her co-stars from the show reached a settlement in their lawsuit against CBS. They were awarded $65,000 each and a promise from the network to honor their initial contractual obligations regarding payouts from merch revenue. She died on April 22nd, 2017.
12.Diff’rent Strokes star Gary Coleman was, in fact, one of the highest-paid child actors in the 70s and 80s, thanks to his role as Arnold Jackson.
Coleman’s life after Diff’rent Strokes was anything but smooth. He once had a net worth of $7 million, which dwindled over time due to medical costs and a legal battle with his adoptive parents. By 1999, he filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy with $72,000 in debt, though he said the blame spread, “from me to accountants to my adoptive parents, to agents to lawyers and back to me again.” Coleman passed away on May 28th, 2010.
13.Judy Garland is a forever icon who delivered an undeniably timeless performance as Dorothy Gale in The Wizard Of Oz. However, in the latter years of her life, she found herself penniless and without a home.
Prior to her sudden passing at 47, Garland found herself struggling for work and battling substance abuse disorder. Though she landed several roles after The Wizard Of Oz, her personal struggles and dwindling health led her to significant financial struggles in her final years. She owed hundreds of thousands to the IRS as a result of mismanaged money and embezzlement. Even with the name-power to sell out shows in New York City, much of the money she generated was reportedly seized to cover the back taxes.
14.Corey Haim’s success throughout the 1980s led to great financial and commercial success in Hollywood. He appeared in movies like 1986’s Lucas and 1988’s License To Drive, but his role in The Lost Boys in 1987 alongside Corey Feldman turned him into an icon. Their partnership resulted in the nickname The Two Coreys and the two actors starred in seven movies together.
Unfortunately, in 1997, he filed for bankruptcy, owing roughly $200,000 in federal and state taxes and hefty medical bills. Corey Feldman revealed that his friend was living with his mother in Oakwood Apartments in L.A., which he described as “month-to-month living” prior to his passing. Feldman added that Haim was “broke” at the time of his death. Reports claim that he had $5000 to his name when he passed away in 2010.
15.Devon Werkheiser, who played Ned Bigby from Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide, went broke at 25 despite an impeccably successful career as a child star.
For Werkheiser, it seemed that landing a main role on a widely successful TV show at 13 years old would set him up for life. Though he admittedly wasn’t making as much during the first few seasons, his salary increased to somewhere between $10,000 to $15,000 each episode during the final seasons. However, he revealed to Business Insider that he was “living modestly on savings” until the money ran out. He revealed that he would often live off of his savings until his next gig. “Over the years, supporting-role jobs started paying less in the industry, and at the same time I was booking less and less,” he said.
16.Mickey Rooney became one of MGM’s biggest success stories, becoming a top earner between 1939 and 1941. Despite his success, he lost his fortune due to his gambling habits.
As Rooney’s star power declined, he found himself facing a number of financial problems. As a result of his gambling problems, he lost significant sums of his wealth and then filed for bankruptcy for the first time in 1996. An evaluation of his property at the time of his death revealed that it was valued at $18,000.
17.From Blossom to Brotherly Love, Joey Lawrence was undoubtedly at the height of his career in the 90s. And while he managed to land a steady stream of gigs afterward, he found himself facing major money problems, leading him and his wife to file for bankruptcy.
In documents filed to the court in 2017, Joey Lawrence and his wife Chandie Yawn-Nelson revealed that they only had $8,000 in the bank and $60 in cash. He revealed that he made a little over half a million in 2015 but as is the case with most actors, he was met with the volatile nature of the industry. The following year, he made a fraction of that — $58,000. While his wife was then listed as unemployed, he said that he earned about $6,966 monthly which includes $2,500 in residuals. Plus, their monthly expenses amounted to $25,505.35, which ultimately left them with $18,539.35 of debt per month.
18.Gary Busey graced televisions across America since the 70s with shows like The Texas Wheelers and films like The Buddy Holly Story, which earned him an Academy Award nomination. He also appeared in films like Lethal Weapon and Predator 2.
In 2019, Busey reportedly filed for bankruptcy, according to TMZ. He had allegedly accumulated between $500,000 to $1 million in debt with only $50,000 in assets to his name. Apparently, he owed a number of entities including Wells Fardo, various lawyers, and the IRS. Additionally, Busey was supposed to pay out a woman named Carla Loeffler after she sued him over an alleged attack in Tulsa.
In response to the rumors, Busey’s publicist stated, “As with many great American institutions, i.e., General Motors, American Airlines, and others who have utilized the strategic business plan of bankruptcy, Gary's filing is the final chapter in a process that began a few years ago of jettisoning the litter of past unfortunate choices, associations, circumstances, and events, to enable the start of a new and clear path toward peace, happiness, and success with his career and his wonderful new soulmate, Steffanie, and their son, Luke."
19.And lastly, Leif Garrett rose to fame in the 1960s as a child star before landing a record deal in the 1970s and becoming a teen icon. While his career appeared to be going smoothly for the most part, he eventually filed for bankruptcy, claiming that he only had a few hundred dollars in cash.
In 2001, The Outsiders actor filed for personal bankruptcy after accumulating upwards of $75,000 in debt due to unpaid credit card bills.
