Explaining Hollywood: Your child wants to act. What do you need to know?
LOS ANGELES — The acting bug can bite at any age, but when it bites one of your kids, you might soon find yourself trying to navigate strange and potentially treacherous waters as you schlep your child to endless auditions, the occasional callback and, if your child is one of the chosen few, a string of paying gigs.
If you already have a talented young athlete or musician in your home, you may have an inkling about how taxing it can be to support a child actor. But be forewarned: Getting into the entertainment business means dealing with a thicket of labor laws, contracts and financial complications far beyond anything you'll find in youth sports leagues and high school marching bands.
It's a steep learning curve, but happily for you, there are a lot of resources out there to help you. For pointers, we caught up with four people active in the Hollywood child-acting scene: Chris Smith, supervisor of the Actors Fund's Looking Ahead program for young actors; Anne Henry, co-founder of the BizParentz Foundation; Lois Yaroshefsky, a longtime on-set school teacher; and Jeff Yang, whose son Hudson starred in the TV series "Fresh Off the Boat" while in middle and high school.
Here are some of their insights about the issues you'll need to grapple with and the places you can look to for guidance.
Know your role and your limits
Henry's three children all acted before moving on to other pursuits, most of them in other fields. In her view, it's important not to get your own ambitions mixed up with your child's. "Your kid has to be the driver. They have to want to do this," she said.
