It all started with Superman's wang.
Watching 1978's Superman, I couldn't help but wonder what the emotional consequences were for the child actor who, playing a newly-arrived Kal-El, proudly bared his member for posterity. If this isn't what the Internet is for, I don't know what is.
Aaron Smolinski, 3 then, is now a creaky 36. I searched for references to any trauma caused by him exposing his wang, which led me to creepy gay sites that I will never, ever be able to unsee. (Plus a discussion of how really, Superman shouldn't be circumcised and that we should "really look closely at his penis.") As for any childhood trauma, well, he majored in child psychology. That might be telling. Then he moved to L.A. to become an actor, and he's been in nothing you've ever heard of since. Fun fact: he had cameos in Supermans II and III.
More. I want more. Some child actors, like Anna Paquin and Ron Howard, never went away, so I know what happened to them. But whatever happened to, say, Newt?
Ripley's sidekick in Aliens, played by Carrie Henn, never acted again. Now 33, she's an elementary school teacher married to a cop. She presumably cautions him that criminals mostly comes out at night. Mostly.
Once I started this, it didn't take me long to recall loathsome Cousin Oliver from The Brady Bunch, and here he is. Now 45, Robbie Rist never left the Hollywood scene, and he's been the Cousin Oliver of several music, film, and music projects you've never heard of. To his credit, even he admits he killed the Brady Bunch.
This one made me feel genuinely old. In A River Runs Through it, we see the very young versions of our protagonists lying on a bank. One kid, played by Vann Gravage, says he wants to be a professional fly fisherman. Gravage made one more movie, 13 years later. The other kid fared a little better. His character said when he grows up, he wants to be a preacher. Apparently he went into numerology. He was Joseph Gordon-Levitt, of 3rd Rock, 10 Things, and 500 Days fame.
Karolyn Grimes, who played Zuzu in It's a Wonderful Life, acted for another eight years, until she was orphaned. Much hardship followed, including divorce, widowhood, and the suicide of one of her seven children. At 70, she seems happy enough now and lives in my old stomping grounds of Carnation, WA, where the hardware store also sells guns and liquor. (I always wanted to walk in and say "Gimme a chainsaw, some barbed wire, some armor-piercing bullets, and a fifth of JD.") Here she is fishing the waters of Puget Sound.
Hadley Kay, who seemingly took three minutes to plunge down Niagara Falls in Superman II, is now 37 and the voice of the Cheerios Honey Bee. Moving on.
Midichlorian sac Jake Lloyd, now 21 (!), acted only one more time after slaughtering the Star Wars saga, two years later in a movie of no consequence. He is now trying to become a film editor. "I want to work with film footage because it would enable me to work with the results of other people's genius." Good call.
The Poltergeist kids are, of course, largely dead. "They're here." girl Heather O'Rourke died of cardiac arrest at 12. Dominique Dunne, who played the older sister, was strangled to death at 23. But what of Oliver Robins, who did battle with the evil clown doll? He was last seen as the character "Customer" in Man Overboard, which was probably eligible to be nominated for some award, but wasn't. Thanks for the awesome suggestion of actors, Allie.
