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Demi Lovato Opened Old Wounds, Then Other Child Stars Joined In: New Doc Features Former Young Hollywood Icons Drew Barrymore, Christina Ricci, Raven-Symoné, JoJo Siwa

The singer steps behind the camera for a brutally candid new doc, enlisting former young Hollywood icons like Drew Barrymore, Christina Ricci, Raven-Symoné and JoJo Siwa to divulge the pleasures and perils of early fame.

By anyone’s measure, Lovato’s life has swung wildly between professional highs, including eight studio albums, all of which debuted in the top 10 of the Billboard 200, and personal lows, bottoming out in 2018 with a near fatal overdose, which was accompanied by three strokes, organ failure and a heart attack. Instead, the film is both a history lesson on child stardom — “From Shirley Temple to TikTok,” says producer Michael D. Ratner — and a macro look at what happens when you “give a really serious job to a really young kid and suddenly they’re making way more money than their parents,” adds veteran filmmaker Nicola Marsh, who serves as Lovato’s co-director. So, in addition to the prominent journalists, lawyers and psychologists whom Lovato and her team peppered in as talking heads, they devote real estate to activist Chris McCarty and Washington State Rep. Kristine Reeves, who are hard at work on proposed legislation that would, among other things, legally require parents of child influencers to set aside a healthy portion of their earnings until those children reach adulthood.

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