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Stars You Forgot Were Actually Famous As Kids

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Some of Hollywood’s most respected dramatic actors spent their childhoods on set long before anyone handed them an Oscar nomination.

Nicki Swift’s video “Stars You Forgot Were Actually Famous As Kids” digs into five performers whose adult careers eclipsed the fact that they were working actors — sometimes for a decade or more — before they turned 20. The lineup includes Joaquin Phoenix, Hayden Panettiere, Jason Bateman, Eliza Dushku, and Jake Gyllenhaal, each of whom built a résumé in film or television as a kid that most fans have completely forgotten about.

• Joaquin Phoenix acted under the name Leaf Phoenix alongside his siblings in the 1980s, appearing in ‘SpaceCamp’ and Ron Howard’s 1989 hit ‘Parenthood’ before racking up multiple Academy Award nominations as an adult.
• Hayden Panettiere played Sarah Roberts on ‘One Life to Live’ from 1994 to 1997 and Lizzie Spaulding on ‘Guiding Light’ from 1996 to 2000, then voiced a role in Pixar’s ‘A Bug’s Life’ and appeared in ‘Remember the Titans’ in 2000.
• Jake Gyllenhaal broke into film at age 10 as Billy Crystal’s son in 1991’s ‘City Slickers’ and starred in 1999’s ‘October Sky’ years before ‘Donnie Darko’ and ‘Brokeback Mountain’ made him a leading man.

Joaquin Phoenix’s Start As Leaf

Before he was collecting Academy Award nominations for gritty adult roles, Joaquin Phoenix worked under the stage name Leaf Phoenix, a childhood credit that trips up even devoted fans who try to track down his early filmography. He came from a family of working child actors — his siblings, including River Phoenix, were also cast in film and television during the same stretch — and he landed parts in ‘SpaceCamp’ and Ron Howard’s 1989 comedy ‘Parenthood’. That early run gave him a foundation in the business years before the dramatic performances that eventually defined his career as an adult.

Hayden Panettiere’s Soap Opera Years

Hayden Panettiere’s résumé as a kid reads like a completely different career than the one fans associate with her now. She started out in television commercials, then landed the role of Sarah Roberts on ‘One Life to Live’ from 1994 to 1997, followed by Lizzie Spaulding on ‘Guiding Light’ from 1996 to 2000 — meaning she was working two daytime soap roles essentially back to back before most kids finish elementary school. From there she voiced a character in Pixar’s ‘A Bug’s Life’ in 1998 and took a supporting role in 2000’s ‘Remember the Titans’, building the kind of varied early credits that rarely get mentioned alongside her later work.

Jason Bateman’s Little House Roots

Jason Bateman’s second act — ‘Arrested Development’, then ‘Ozark’ — is so strong that it’s easy to forget he was already a recognizable face to television audiences in the 1980s. He played James Cooper Ingalls on ‘Little House on the Prairie’ and went on to star in ‘Silver Spoons’ and ‘The Hogan Family’, logging real leading-role experience on network TV as a teenager. That kind of early volume is exactly why his later resurgence read as a comeback rather than a debut.

Bateman was starring on network sitcoms as a teenager years before “Arrested Development” ever made him a punchline generator for a new generation.

Eliza Dushku Before Sunnydale

Eliza Dushku’s pre-‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ work includes two credits that surprise people who only know her as Faith. She co-starred in ‘This Boy’s Life’ in 1993, and a year later played Arnold Schwarzenegger’s daughter in the action blockbuster ‘True Lies’ — a role that put her opposite one of the biggest movie stars on the planet before she was even a teenager. Both credits arrived years before the character work that eventually made her a cult favorite.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s Early Film Credits

Jake Gyllenhaal was ten years old when he played Billy Crystal’s son in 1991’s ‘City Slickers’, and he followed that with a starring role in 1999’s ‘October Sky’. Those two credits sit almost a decade apart from the films that made him a bona fide leading man — ‘Donnie Darko’ and ‘Brokeback Mountain’ — which is part of why casual fans tend to forget he’d already logged real screen time as a child. It’s a similar arc to what’s covered in the transformation of Jason Momoa from childhood to 42, where an actor’s early years get overshadowed once the adult career takes off.

What ties all five together is the gap between “recognizable as a kid” and “recognizable as themselves” — Panettiere on two different soaps, Bateman on three separate sitcoms, Dushku standing across from Schwarzenegger, Phoenix billed as Leaf, and Gyllenhaal already carrying a movie at age 10. None of it reads like a warm-up act once you actually line up the credits side by side, which is the whole point of Nicki Swift running through them in order.