On the eve of the latest Harry Potter movie's release, the Guardian considers the fate of child stars--without once mentioning the Rickster, Drew Barrymore or Shirley Temple, which must be some sort of a record. Instead, they talk to people like Adrian Hall, who played Jeremy Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Actually, Hall's got a pretty good sense of humor about his plight:
"It'll be on my gravestone but there comes a point when you have to accept that. If you don't, then you drive yourself insane and hang yourself in a motel room."
The cinetrix had occasion to watch a 20-year-old Temple play the improbably named Philadelphia Thursday in Fort Apache the other night, and her former child star "twinkle," for lack of a better word, managed to distract from the performances of John Wayne and Henry Fonda, no mean feat. Now that's a star.
