“Boy Meets World” and “Mrs. Doubtfire” actor Matthew Lawrence has some knowledge to drop: Hollywood’s superficial obsession with “inclusion” and “compassion” masks one of the most ruthless businesses in the world — especially if you’re a child star.
As Lawrence’s brother Joey might say, “Whoa!”
Matthew made the comments in a recent conversation with older brother Joey and younger brother Andrew on the thespian trio’s “Brotherly Love Podcast.”
‘They just literally toss them to the wolves, taking no responsibility.’
Fame shame
Lawrence noted that the pressure of sudden fame and wealth is harder for child actors, for whom success comes “before you actually know who you are.” How to navigate that is something the industry “quietly stopped teaching” its youngest employees, Lawrence claimed.
Lawrence, who landed his first recurring television role at age 4, said the industry had a certain “responsibility” to child actors. His brothers, both of whom entered showbiz before they were 6, seemed to agree.
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– YouTube
Tossed aside
Speaking of the highly publicized drug problems of troubled celebs like former Nickelodeon child star Tylor Chase, Lawrence put some of the onus on an industry that discards them once they’re no longer useful.
“I feel like they haven’t failed. I feel like the business has failed them,” he said, while observing the disconnect between such callousness and the image the business likes to project:
Hollywood always talks about how they’re the most compassionate, inclusive, amazing community, and they eat their own. Literally eat their own. They put these kids in movies. They build them up and talk about how incredible they are and throw money their way, [only] to pull the rug from them as soon as something doesn’t work or as soon as they have outgrown that moment, and they just literally toss them to the wolves, taking no responsibility.
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Photo by Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images
Guilted cage
As for Hollywood activism, Lawrence suggested it’s mostly motivated by guilt.
“They do have this inherent thing where they feel bad that they are sitting on top of a mountain of cash and fame.”
This doesn’t always translate into a good grasp of the issues, Lawrence noted.
“They always seem to pick and choose, like, the ‘in’ topic, when all this crap is going wrong with the world that they just look right over.”
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