I was a child star – Aaron Carter shouldn’t have died in vain, Hollywood is a ‘train wreck pipeline’ and needs to change
AARON Carter’s death won’t be the last in Hollywood, former Disney Channel star Christy Carlson Romano has said.
She also insists that the US movie industry isn’t safe for kids and is engulfed in a youth mental health crisis.
Christy Carlson Romano told The U.S. Sun: “Children in Hollywood have always been in crisis and there’s always been a time when they’ve not ever been completely safe in that environment.
“People assume that famous kids don’t need help, but it’s quite the opposite when you know how at risk they truly are, so it’s bad and I just don’t want Aaron to die in vain.
“I know other people that took their lives in our industry and wouldn’t feel comfortable naming their names and there’s a lot of people that in their memories we need to do better by.
“Mental illness starts quite young and my friend, the actress Alison Stoner, calls it the toddler to ‘train wreck pipeline,’ and we really need to intervene.”
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Christy bravely spoke out just a short time after 34-year-old Aaron had been scheduled to appear on The Vulnerable Podcast, where former Hollywood stars and celebrities often come to share their journeys with her.
The troubled singer who shot to fame in the late 1990’s had been found dead in his bathtub a few weeks ago, and while the official cause of his death has yet to be released, friends said it may have been from a substance abuse relapse.
“The bad road is drugs, alcohol, assault charges, potential incarceration, having to resort to sex work like having an OnlyFans account so that they can make ends meet,” adds Christy.
“If you told a young child with stars in their eyes that this was going to be their future twenty years later, do you honestly think they would do that to themselves?
“I just don’t think we’re setting kids up to succeed.”
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During her own journey as a teen heading through the Hollywood movie sector, Christy eventually turned to alcohol to cope and has seen and experienced it all.
She started out in the industry at the tender age of six when she appeared on Broadway before moving out to Los Angeles to star in the Disney comedy Even Stevens as Ren the older sister of Louis Stevens played by Shia LaBeouf.
Christy was only 14 years old when she threw herself into working long hours on three Disney Channel shows, all at the same time, including Cadet Kelly with Hilary Duff, while laying down soundtracks for Kim Possible and other Disney projects.
“People want to have conspiracy theories about what it’s like being famous at a young age, or what I call a high-performing child,” she says.
“With The Vulnerable Podcast, I’m trying to give visibility and a sense of purpose and connection on what it’s really like to be famous as a kid.
“In my generation, though Britney came first, she’s truly the OG and was in one of the earlier iterations of the Micky Mouse Club outside the 50s and 60s when they originated it, so they really carved a path for programming on the channel.
“When Disney was trying to get into the narrative space they started doing very different content and so I remember Lee Thomson Young, The Famous Jett Jackson, who has also since passed.
“That was one of the first big Disney Channel shows, but my generation really took Disney Channel mainstream so Shia and Hilary Duff and I were the bigs and it grew from there.
“Aaron was younger than me and was dating Hilary and whoever, and so that drama escaped me, and I think Shia, Hilary, and I went down three totally different roads in the end though.
“I truly feel like Shia has had a hard time with it and he still has a ton of emotional struggles and is now in his sobriety.
“I’m not sure where he stands with that, but I really do wish him the best, as he’s so talented so it’s hard when you see someone you knew at such a young age still struggle to this day.
“I don’t think anyone wants to see anyone struggle like that for too long.
“I think Hilary has a tight-knit family, is a great mom, and is still working in the industry. In fact, she got married quite young and kept working.
“Everyone has a different path that they ended up on, which is also based on their upbringing, so maybe it’s nature versus nurture.
“Now what I intend to do is create a foundation or a coalition to try and create a class or blueprint on informing people how not to take the bad road in Hollywood.”
Shia, Hilary, and Christy all seemed to have shared some of the same experiences such as living away from family and friends, perhaps in a unique parental setup, and coping with a new way of schooling.
“During my time at Disney Channel, Hilary, and Shia were two people choosing different paths for their educations and I personally wanted a more traditional education and to go to college and was judged for that,” she explains.
“So here we have two mega stars who are now almost permanent A-Listers and who’ve lived very different lives from me and from each other.
“Education isn’t a good or a bad marker for or a good or a bad life, but for me, I gained a degree at an Ivy League college in the end, so I’ve been able to pivot.
“Disney was in support of me getting an education and I haven’t been jumping from production to production and I’ve realized that there’s a lot I can offer the world, outside of being an actor.
“I think all of us, including Aaron, also had the parenting difficulty, where we were separated, and for me, the industry took my mother way from me.
“Then there’s Selena, who’s still struggling and is reaching out and wants to be seen and wants community here.
“What’s really hard is that other child actors like her aren’t coming to the table and it’s because they don’t feel safe to, even though they could come to my podcast and talk to me, and share with me.
“Me and friends are having conversations on my Podcast and we want to fund research as I think data will truly help people truly understand that this is an issue.
“I’m going to stack the deck against anyone because why would you come up against protecting children? You’d have to be a predator.
“Hollywood needs to see that the data for trauma and what happens to them after fame at a young age is staggering and I think they would be much more willing to listen than ever before
“I think Disney’s going to be the first and best place to implement change and I trust them, but maybe not other studios.“
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“I think the research that I also want to do in this space will show that the majority of child actors probably have had trauma in their lifetime.
“I just want to be a conduit for change now, and I’m optimistic, so if we get some research done, it’ll show all this.”
