In a lot of cases with child actors people and the media call them overnight successes, that they did one thing and it made them successful right away. Even though that’s true in some cases like Natalie Portman who became a recognised actress overnight with the movie Léon it’s not true for a lot of other child actors.

It can be funny sometimes if you look at filmographies and it turns out that you’ve seen them in movies before without even realising it. I’m not counting tiny guest spots on TV shows right now; if I did that I could be going on forever seeing that’s pretty much how every actor gets started.

The first time I really had that was when I was looking at the filmography of Jena Malone. Granted, she’s not really a superstar but she still gets a fair amount of movies done. At some point I did check out her filmography because I didn’t really know her, turns out I have a on DVD with the woman; Contact in this case which she made when she was twelve years old. Her role in that movie is better known for a difficult special effect (It’s extensively mentioned in the extras; Jena is running towards a mirror but you can’t see the camera. In 1997 that was a lot more difficult than it would be these days.). She plays the younger version of Jodie Foster in the movie.

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Mischa Barton, Thora Birch, Kaley Cuoco, Elisha Cuthbert, Kirsten Dunst, Scarlett Johansson, Keira Knightley, Lindsay Lohan, Jena Malone, Mandy Moore, Hayden Panettiere, Natalie Portman, Brittany Snow and Michelle Trachtenberg. Those are the names linked on starletlinks.com that are proven to be smokers. This means that of the names linked on the site in the age category over 16, 35% smokes. This is higher than the average in the normal population, the normal number for women in the United States is 22%.

Some things I have to say before going further into this is that these are the people that are proven to smoke. There might be others that do a very good job of hiding it. And of course I also don’t know how much these people smoke, they could be social smokers. But one thing is certain, they do smoke. Personally I think it’s a horrible habit; though I have personal reasons for that. But I don’t think any less of people that do smoke.

But why is the percentage of smokers so high in Hollywood? And why do they start so young? I think there are multiple reasons, I remember an interview with Shannon Doherty, she’s way past the starlet age but it does show a point. She once had to smoke in a role; she liked it so she kept doing it. I don’t know how often this happens but it shows it does happen.

At first she denied it but these days she can be spotted holding a cigarette quite frequently.
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