18 Former Child Stars Who Spoke Out About Changing Their Image Once They Grew Up

Growing up is hard, but coming of age under the spotlight has its own unique set of challenges. Celebs who get their start as child stars have a difficult choice to make — either retire from Hollywood or make the leap to a "grown-up" career.

For those who opt to continue singing or acting, the change can be challenging. Not only are they shifting the way fans see them, but they're also altering the way they see themselves.

Here are 18 child stars who made the leap to a grown-up career and the challenges they faced:

1.Everybody Hates Chris star Tyler James Williams "tried to outrun" reflecting on his "child star" label for a long time, but that "made things worse." When he was 23 and trying to transition to grown-up roles, a series of Crohn's disease flare-ups, which were partially anxiety induced, led to hospitalization.

He told Bustle, "[My brothers and I are] not as chaotic as I think most child actors get the [reputation for] being, but that doesn't necessarily mean we adjusted well. We had a lot to work through, and a lot of therapists got a lot of money from me. That was the uphill fight and what feels like the fight of my career and life. Because [acting] is the only thing that I love like this. I lost 6 inches of my intestines to that."

2.After wrapping her Disney Channel series Wizards of Waverly Place, Selena Gomez took a role in the Harmony Korine movie Spring Breakers. She felt like she "did grow up" filming it, but it was "a very awkward transition to make."

She told Reuters, "I want to challenge myself and [my choices] may not be appropriate for a young audience. I’m choosing movies that I feel are artistically fun and creative. I hope people are appreciative of the work I do. I feel like I’m doing the best I can."

3.Brooke Shields was only 11 months old when she began modeling and acting, but when she turned 18, she enrolled in Princeton University so she could break free of being pigeonholed as "the pretty one" or "the model." She knew she "needed to develop intellectually, so [she] wouldn’t become a victim to the pitfalls of the industry."

She told Glamour, "The level of education and the difficulty and the challenge of Princeton was so important for me to triumph in, because it gave me a sense of my own self. Up until then, I was only what other people said I was or projected on to me. I just accepted it all because it didn’t occur to me to really nurture anything else. You get paid for that, and you get approval for it. So it’s like, Well, it’s not broken, why fix it? ... But the level of this and the pride with which I had the ability to say, 'I graduated with honors from this esteemed place,' coming from the entertainment industry, I was able to have my own opinions. And I don’t think I had them before."

4.At 15, Billie Piper was a pop star living on her own. At the time, it "felt really exciting and liberating and satisfied [her] with this quest to be a grown-up" but it also felt "extremely desperate and lonely sometimes." When she married radio DJ Chris Evans at 18, she "stopped caring, and that was really integral to [her] healing and pursuing acting."

She told BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, "When I got with Chris, I went around the world with him and felt loved."

5.When Miley Cyrus was on Hannah Montana, she "was an adult when [she] was supposed to be a kid," so after the series wrapped, she was "an adult and [she was] acting like a kid."

She told Harper's Bazaar, "I took off and I just wanted to party. I worked so hard, and I wanted to buy a house and just chill... There are times when I'm sitting in my big ole house and I'm like, 'I can't believe I'm allowed to be here alone.'"

6.Vanessa Hudgens was "very, very thankful" for the success of High School Musical, but it "closed people's minds up as to which characters [she] could portray."

She told Untitled Magazine, "So for a while I was kind of struggling and fighting for these roles that I just desperately wanted. It was hard and it was a struggle, but then again life is always a struggle... Definitely crossing over and being able to tackle these grittier parts was a challenge, but I feel like I’ve done it! It’s a whole new chapter!"

7.At 8, Dakota Fanning became the youngest SAG Award nominee ever for her work in I Am Sam. However, her early success put a lot of pressure on her as she grew up, and "people would always say to [her], 'Are you worried about growing up? Are you still going to be able to act?'"

She told the Press Association, "It would make you crazy and it would make you act out or think you need to grow up too fast, and that leads to making mistakes. I'm a very rational, logical person so that was never an option for me because I don't want that for my life."

8.Raven-Symoné "had to go through a mental grow up" because "up until [her] late twenties, there were people telling [her] how [she] should look — it was just easier to be told what to do."

She told Insider, "Now that I'm feeling empowered by the new generation of just being yourself on camera, and my own self really marinating in my own juices and understanding who I am and who I feel comfortable being, I'm able to present how I feel as Raven-Symoné, the entertainer."

9.Keke Palmer, who started her career at 11, felt that "as a child [in the] entertainer world, your emotions are always the last thing that people care about" and "you get really quickly into being a people-pleaser." So, she "fought a lot of that [pressure] most of [her] adult life."

She told InStyle's podcast Ladies First With Laura Brown, "I think that's something that I work toward every day is to not worry about people not understanding me, because I understand myself. Sometimes it's much easier because I don't have to please anybody but myself."

10.Hilary Duff "just chose to bow out for a minute" after Lizzie McGuire wrapped because she had this realization: "I don't even know if I'm that person anymore, and I don't even have the time to figure that out."

She told Pride Source, "Everyone thought I was just absolutely nuts because I was really successful and making a lot of money. And it was scary, because there was no guarantee that my career was still gonna be there. I think, personally, it was very healthy, and I’m proud of where I am now."

11.When Bella Thorne left Disney Channel, she "stopped listening to people telling [her] that [she] needed to be this and that" and decided that "[her] fans are going to love [her] and stick with [her] whether [she's] wearing a crop top and a short skirt or not."

She told Nylon, "I literally would talk with a higher voice in interviews because that was the whole innocent Disney appeal."

12.For Daniel Radcliffe, "The hardest thing about growing up in the spotlight, it's not the easy access to drugs or the strange, sort of pandering world you enter into. ... The difficulty is trying to work out who you are while constantly coming up against a perception of yourself that everybody else already has."

He told the Mirror, "I think it’s very important, especially when you become famous young, to work out who you are without fame and without that as part of your identity, because that will go. Fame does not last forever. For anyone."

13.After The Wonder Years ended, Danica McKellar studied mathematics at UCLA because she "needed to find out how [she] was valuable outside of Winnie Cooper, and math was challenging and [she] did well at it."

She told Entertainment Tonight, "I love this feeling that my value, the important stuff had nothing to do with how I looked or television."

14.After Suite Life on Deck ended, Cole Sprouse felt that "taking time for college was really important" because, when you grow up working on a soundstage, "you're raised in such an insular environment that you forget what real human experience or boots-on-the-ground actually looks like."

He told Variety, "I think it's one of those things that I'd recommend to every single young actor. It allowed me to regain a semblance of my anonymity, which is something that's really important."

15.When Christy Carlson Romano was a child actor, she wasn't "told that the work is going to slow down" as she got older.

On her YouTube channel, she said, "In fact, I was told the opposite, specifically by my mom, some of my team, even my money manager at the time."

16.Victoria Justice felt that it isn't fair to criticize her peers because "transitioning from a child star to an adult is a tricky thing," and her fans "have been reacting really great to [her] transition" from Nickelodeon to MTV and beyond.

At the time, she told E! News, "Coming from Nickelodeon, I started on that network when I was 12 years old and I'm 21 now, so I feel like lots of the people who were watching me on Zoey 101 and Victorious have kind of grown up with me. So I feel like they're ready to see me in a role like this [in MTV's Eye Candy], and I'm definitely ready to take on a role like this, so the support has been amazing."

17.Laura Marano had "a rollercoaster of a few years" after Austin & Ally ended. She parted ways with two different record labels, went through her first breakup, and "was left in a pretty weird emotional state" before deciding to go independent and start her own record label.

She told InStyle, "I don't have to deal with the label politics that come with people who sign me and how they see my career. I can own it and control it the way I want to, which is amazing. It'd be nice to have the resources a major label has, but it's been awesome to control what I want to put out there and when and how I want to put it out. I'm on this journey where I'm a little bit out of my league, but I'm releasing music — it’s exciting. I'm so scared and so happy."

18.And finally, when Zendaya moved on from Disney Channel, she had "a very clear vision of what [she] wanted to do" and "a very good sense of self." She also thinks, "It's really just been about taking [her] time, not rushing, and trusting the right thing is coming even if it doesn’t feel like it."

She told Vogue Australia, "The first thing I will say is it’s important not to judge any other person’s career or trajectory, because when you’re a young actor you are growing up in front of the world. Sometimes that’s not easy. Everybody has their own path."