Growing up in Hollywood it seemed like every kid was the child of some star. We had no idea that other people would think we were special, because there was no other lifestyle to compare it to.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Growing up in Hollywood it seemed like every kid was the child of some star.
I'm just a normal girl. People have these preconceived notions about what movie stars are about and how we've grown up. My mother is pretty regular and raised us just like anyone else.
I was never famous as a kid. That's the biggest difference between me and any other kid actor is that I wasn't famous as a kid.
I don't feel I was ever a 'famous' child actor. I was just a working actor who happened to be a kid. I was never really in a hit show until I was a teenager with West Wing playing First Daughter Zoey Bartlet. In a way, that was my saving grace - not being a star on a hit show. It kept me working and kept me grounded.
In the studios days, the public's perception of movie stars was much different, because the stars were so much less exposed. This made them seem more special, more unearthly. Today they're no longer perceived as different - they've become human, so to speak.
It was actually pretty difficult to grow up in the Star City. There were regular kids around me, and everybody knew that my father was a cosmonaut. Even at school, every teacher could comment on my behavior just because I was considered special.
If you ever meet an actor who's the child of actors, they'll never tell you that they wanted to be a star. But what I did realise early on was that I just wanted to be in that tribe.
I'm one of the few people in Hollywood who actually had a good childhood.
I was not a child star. I was more like a young auditioner.
The idea of being a 'child star' always sounded awful to people my age, and so I was just very aware that these things are kind of fleeting and that a lot of it didn't have to do with me: it had to do with my age; it had to do with whatever came to mind when people thought of a young internet sensation.