Former Child Stars Who Have Opened Up About Financially Supporting Their Families

From Melissa Joan Hart taking care of her little siblings to Sydney Sweeney paying her mom's mortgage, see how these young stars helped out their families

For these actors, becoming a child star came along with more than just fame.

Stars like Zendaya and Cole Sprouse have been acting for as long as they can remember and ultimately became their family's "breadwinners" because of their early successes. As the stars have now graduated from child stardom into adulthood, many of them have looked back on how the "role reversal" impacted their families over the years.

Read on to learn more about the young stars who've opened up about supporting their loved ones.

Zendaya

While speaking to Vogue earlier this year, Zendaya shared that she has "complicated" feelings about child stardom.

"I don’t know how much of a choice I had," she told the outlet. "I have complicated feelings about kids and fame and being in the public eye, or being a child actor."

"We’ve seen a lot of cases of it being detrimental," she continued. "I think only now, as an adult, am I starting to go, 'Oh, okay, wait a minute: I’ve only ever done what I’ve known, and this is all I’ve known.'"

The actress, who got her start on Disney Channel's Shake It Up says that because of the success she found as a young actor, there was a shift in her family's dynamic.

"I felt like I was thrust into a very adult position: I was becoming the breadwinner of my family very early, and there was a lot of role-reversal happening, and just kind of becoming grown, really," she explained.

Melissa Joan Hart

During a recent appearance on ABC Audio and Good Morning America’s Pop Culture Moms, Melissa Joan Hart looked back on her experience growing up as the oldest of eight siblings and the ways in which she supported her family.

"I felt like I had to behave to be a role model for them,” she said. “You know, the money that I made on commercials and Clarissa [Explains It All] or any of my acting jobs, it always went to the family.”

“I got to go pick out a Barbie and like, as I got older, some people were like, ‘Oh, that's not right. You should have kept your money,’” she added. “And I was like ... I would rather put food on the table and make sure my siblings had good clothes and bicycles for Christmas, you know, things like that. So, I definitely felt like I wanted to be responsible for them.”

JoJo Siwa

After competing on Abby's Ultimate Dance Competition at age 9, JoJo Siwa's career took off with appearances on Dance Moms, a wildly successful YouTube channel, a hit song, "Boomerang" and a Nickelodeon deal that included a slew of merch — which of course included bows.

Now 21, Siwa recently opened up on Alex Cooper's Call Her Daddy podcast about the impact her financial success has had on her family even to this day.

She said her mom recently thanked her for not leaving their family "high and dry" when she turned 18 and could access all the money she had made as a child.

"My mom actually said something today to me that was really sweet,” Siwa said. "When you are a kid, 15 percent of every penny you make goes into a Coogan account [to protect her earnings]. My parents thought when I turned 18, I was gonna get my Coogan account money, take all of my money and have it all be mine."

“That’s always been a fear of theirs, always has been. Just because the opportunity of me leaving them high and dry was right there," she continued. "People have done it before. Child stars have done it before, but I would never do that to my family.”

Sydney Sweeney

After starting her acting career at "11, 12 years old," Sydney Sweeney saw what her parents sacrificed in order to help her reach her dreams.

“I watched my parents lose a lot. We filed for bankruptcy, and they lost their house back home on the lake," Sweeney told Women's Health. "We couldn’t afford life in L.A. We couldn’t afford life anywhere."

The outlet explained that to help her parents make ends meet, Sweeney worked at Universal Studios, babysat and cleaned restaurant bathrooms.

“It was hard because they were supporting my dream, and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else,” she explained. “I didn’t want to fail them. No matter how long it took, I was going to be in a TV show or a movie, and I wasn’t going to stop until something happened.”

Women's Health noted that she has since bought back her great-grandparents' home on the same lake where her parents lived and earlier this year, she told WhoWhatWear that she had paid off her mom's mortgage.

Demi Lovato

After years in the spotlight, from Barney & Friends to Camp Rock to a successful music career, Demi Lovato opened up about how being her family's "breadwinner" impacted them for years to come.

"I noticed that when I came into the spotlight at a young age, and then was the breadwinner ... there wasn't a manual for my parents to read and it say, 'Here's what to do to raise a child star,'" Lovato (who uses she/they pronouns) said on an episode of her podcast, 4D with Demi Lovato in 2021. "They didn't get that."

"So when they would try to ground me at 17, I would say, 'I pay the bills.' And I cringe now when I think about that attitude," she continued. "But when the world is putting you on a pedestal, you kind of think that you could do no wrong. As I've gotten older, I see my parents just as big kids themselves."

Keke Palmer

As a child, Keke Palmer's dream was to move to L.A. from the Chicago suburb where she lived with her parents. That dream would eventually come true, but not without some bumps in the road. While the plan was initially for her dad, Larry, to find a job once they moved, he ultimately stayed home to care for Keke's siblings as her mom, Sharon, was working closely with her as her manager, the Los Angeles Times reported.

"It just hit a point where my dad could no longer do a job because if he did a job, then there would be nobody to take care of my older sister and my younger siblings because my mom was always with me," she told the Times. "So it was like, all of our roles were switched. I became the financial breadwinner because my career was bringing in the most money, and my parents wanted to support me but they couldn’t have their own jobs because their own jobs would not even allow them to really be able to sustain a stable household."

"So everybody’s positions were flipped upside down," she added.

Because of this flip, she says, she later began to feel the "pressure" that came along with supporting the family.

"I started to realize that I was the financial breadwinner, and that if I didn’t have a job, who would have a job? Or how could my parents have a job? Or how could we sustain the same lifestyle even if they did have a job? Because I was making the kind of money that many people never make," she said. "It put us in a crazy position."

Cole Sprouse

During a sit down with Alex Cooper for her Call Her Daddy podcast, Cole Sprouse opened up about the ups and downs of growing up in the spotlight.

Sprouse, who started acting as an infant alongside his twin brother Dylan, explained what he sees as the "two types of kids" who get into acting at a young age.

"I think there's two types of kids within the child acting business. There's, like, the thespian children who choose to do it and then there's the working-class kids that, in our case, at least…I mean, it started, really, as a means to put bread on the table," he said. "My parents did not come from too much."

Cole explained that he doesn't resent his parents for the decision or "regret" his early work, adding, "I have now been granted a life of primarily financial stability —and surplus in very many cases — that is the byproduct of working for 30 years and trading my childhood."

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