Peaking at 10

Earlier this year, Macaulay Culkin came out with a semi-autobiographical book. Now his "My Girl" co-star Anna Chlumsky writes about the difficulty of "making it" after age 10:

I had been given a big wide glimpse of what VH1 tells you “making it” is. But in order to realize what my version of “making it” would be, I’d need to purge theirs. By the end of high school, it had grown painful to want something so bad and seem to get so little in return for my efforts. I could barely look myself in the zit-magnifying mirror, let alone tackle an entire industry that thought I wasn’t good enough.
....
Success at a young age not only gives you a taste of grandeur and attention that you forever strive to duplicate, but it also gives you that precious sense that you can achieve absolutely anything. The trick is to learn how to let the past drive you to your next, bigger, and better peak. I know it will be a harder road than ever before. It’ll be something more akin to the vigorous path trod by the Vaudevillians than to the lucky break I got at age 10.

So Anna Chlumsky quit her job editing sci-fi stories (!) to follow The Great White Way. We wish her well.

I suppose this is the curse of all child actors. The difficulty of convincing people that hey, you're all grown up. I wonder what it's like for LA Lopez. The iodized salt did him in.