Portrait of the artist as a former child star

Part 5 - The O-T-H-E-R

by Ellen Barry

In the worst instances, former child stars sink into deep wells of alienation. They walk among us, but they are strangers to certain human customs. Jeannie Russell, who played Margaret in Dennis the Menace and now counsels child actors for the Screen Actors Guild, describes the moment this way: "It's like waking up in the middle of the desert and realizing your tribe has wandered off without you."

For Russell, the moment came when she was 17, and "knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I would not work again." Someone asks, for the first time, what they want to be when they grow up. At some point it happens to every single one of them: the ride is over, and the long walk begins.

And, inevitably, part of the star is frozen at this traumatic moment in adolescence. In The Official Mickey Mouse Club Book, an otherwise upbeat retrospective, former Mouseketeer Karen Pendleton recalls the hazing she faced when she entered public school: "All the kids crowded around me at lunchtime. My mother had said to always be pleasant, so I really tried to be, but I was scared. They'd ask me for my autograph and then tear it up. One day a kid came by and cut my hair with scissors. Another one threw a worm in my mouth."

Reflecting on this subject, Petersen seethes with the wrath of the social reformer. The way he sees it, child stars are knowingly stripped of their social skills and launched defenseless into the world. "We know that children can be cruel and vindictive, and yet we will deliberately turn one child into the Other -- that's O-t-h-e-r -- and then cast them back into school after starring in a television series, and then tell him, `It's normal, take care of yourself.' Well, you know, you get the living pants beat out of you."

And Russell, who once appeared with a rehabilitated Dana Plato on a television talk show, says this sense of alienation can account for a whole range of sociopathic behaviors. Russell, a chiropractor, has this far stayed on the right side of the law, but she says she knows exactly why Plato held up that video store. All the former child stars understand.

"We can finish each other's sentences," says Russell. "It's a common bond, even when there's a 30-year age difference. I can only imagine that it's like people who claim to be abductees. We're like the Other."

Part 6 - A little schadenfreude

Ellen Barry can be reached at ebarry[a]phx.com.