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Demi Lovato’s starry documentary Child Star offers hard truths

Former Disney performer’s conversations with other former kid entertainers make for a fascinating, if limited, collective processing of fame

For a different generation, that Ricci refers to her father as a “failed cult leader”, or that Thompson learned he was defrauded out of his childhood earnings when his financial “manager” ghosted on the day he was to buy his first house. Child Star is a promising, if limited, directorial debut; one only wishes she could talk to more of her Disney peers, and it touches just briefly on issues of addiction, paparazzi or what happens when the spotlight wanes. Lovato ends by advocating that the acting industry’s so-called Coogan Laws, which set aside some earnings for a child performer to access when they’re 18, apply to non-traditional content creators.

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