Child Stars Who Lost All Their Money

Best known as Joey Russo on "Blossom," Joey Lawrence earned acclaim and a lifetime of people saying "whoa!" at him. He managed recurring roles on several programs, often playing a Joey, Joe, or J.J., per IMDB (why mess with perfection).

Starring as an adult in "Melissa and Joey," a show about a man trying to find a job after bankruptcy, he had a salary of $534,000, per Celebrity Net Worth. Two years after the sitcom was canceled, so was most of his money. He and his wife, Chandie Yawn-Nelson, overspent so egregiously that they owed over $18,000 at the end of every month. According to The Blast, the couple filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2017. Lawrence listed $43,907.32 in assets and a staggering $355,517.27 in liabilities. After the dust settled, Us Weekly, after obtaining court records, reported that they were left with only a little over $52,000 to pay all their creditors.

In 2018, Lawrence's production company was auctioned off, netting a high bid of $56,000, according to Yahoo. The buyer has all rights to Lawrence's songs, residuals, and royalties of all work before Lawrence's bankruptcy. Lawrence, however, was upbeat when filming "Melissa and Joey," saying in an interview with Steve Eramo on TMR, "It's been a long haul, and the fact that I'm still able to [act] 31 years later feels pretty great to me."

According to TIME, Gary Coleman was once the highest-paid television star for his role as Arnold Drummond on "Diff'rent Strokes," where he earned around $70,000 per episode, according to the Business Library. How could it be that a highly recognizable actor would declare bankruptcy in 1999? In his words, he could spread the blame "from me to accountants to my adoptive parents, to agents to lawyers and back to me again." Coleman had to take a job as a mall security guard to make ends meet. When this wasn't enough, he tried for fame again by running for California governor in 2003, according to Reuters.

He died in 2010, having spent much on medical bills and a lengthy battle against his parents, as reported by the Associated Press. When he came of age, CBS News reports that Coleman discovered his parents had "skimmed" his fortune.

Owing to handwritten revisions to Coleman's will shortly before his death, Anna Gray, his former girlfriend and manager, laid claim to his estate, along with Coleman's ex-wife, Shannon Price. According to Gray's lawyer speaking to ABC News, Coleman's "present assets pale significantly in comparison to what may be garnered."

Corey Haim rocketed to stardom with "Lucas and The Lost Boys" in the 1980s, becoming one half of the "scribbled on a Trapper Keeper surrounded by hearts" duo dubbed The Coreys with Corey Feldman. How, in ten years, did Haim go from trying to survive vampires to trying to survive bankruptcy?

The answer was addiction. Haim didn't only need drugs to keep partying but also to cope. According to former child star Alison Arngrim, speaking to The Guardian, "The word was they were given drugs and being used for sex." This is echoed in Feldman's 2020 documentary, "My Truth: The Rape of the Two Coreys" (via IMDB). Haim's addiction became a liability, and the drugs inhibited his talent, according to actor Seth Green to Entertainment Weekly.

In a 1997 bankruptcy filing, Haim listed debts of nearly $104,000 to the IRS and $100,000 for state taxes and medical expenses. His assets were an old car, $750 in clothing, and $7,500 in residuals and royalties, as reported by the Chicago Tribune. After 15 rehab stints, the New Zealand Herald reports that he cut his hair and pulled out his own teeth to sell online. When he died in 2010, he was so poor — with a net worth that Celebrity Net Worth puts at $5,000 – that his family asked his fans to help cover funeral expenses, then said that the city of Toronto had stepped in — though Toronto Life reports that they hadn't.

If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse, please contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.

Riding his Backstreet brother Nick Carter's coattails, Aaron Carter put out a self-titled album when he was 9 years old. That album went gold. The next? Certified platinum by RIAA. According to TheThings, Carter earned $3.5 million from his early albums and, by the time he was 18, he reports that he made over $200 million. HuffPost states that Carter told Oprah, "We had this massive compound, with, like, 12 houses on it. It was worth over $10 million, and I had paid a lot of that money."

The fall came swiftly. On the Spike series "Life or Debt," Carter said, "When I turned 18 years old, I got hit with million dollars of taxes. I had to file a Chapter 7 bankruptcy to protect my parents from going to prison ..." Us Weekly reported that his assets in 2013 were $8,232.16 and his liabilities $2,204,854. Much of his debt was due to his parents' mismanaging his career (see also: $10 million compound). According to CNN, Carter owned the publishing rights to the songs he wrote but received no royalties. Far from being pessimistic, Carter's rep said, "It's actually very positive. It's him doing what he needs to do to move forward."

In 2020, Carter began an OnlyFans page where a single nude photo of him cost $50-$125 (and, for an additional $50, he would rate a picture of you). Queerty states that they recycled leaked nudes. Wealthy Gorilla claims his net worth was $400 thousand.

Given that Lindsay Lohan played precocious twins in "The Parent Trap," it's fitting that she had twice the trouble. In 2004, when "Mean Girls" was released, it seemed a sure thing that she would make the leap to a successful adult career. According to CheatSheet, she earned a combined $22.5 million for her subsequent three movies. As her star rose, so did her drug addiction (according to a 2010 Business Insider article, ending up $30,000 in debt for drugs alone) and her lavish spending on cars and clothes. Her frequent trips to rehab dulled her star power.

In 2012, Lohan had her bank accounts seized for owing almost $234,000, according to HuffPost, though Charlie Sheen lent her $100,000. That year, Lohan made a million posing for a Playboy spread. Hugh Hefner tweeted, "The Lindsay Lohan January-February Double Issue is breaking sales records."

In 2013, Oprah stepped in to give Lohan a fresh start with a reality series. Oprah struggled with Lohan both on and off the set and with ratings less than hoped, Oprah canceled the show, cutting off Lohan's only source of income, as reported by Bustle. As of 2021, Wealthy Gorilla estimated Lohan's net worth to be $800,000 — pocket change to the major star she should be. But in 2022, Lohan began another comeback, this time with Netflix, with the Christmas-themed rom-com "Falling for Christmas."

It's hard on the ego to have an eponymous show just as you hit puberty. Amanda Bynes seemed poised to transition from Nickelodeon to network TV to movies, earning, according to Celebrity Net Worth, between $2-3 million a year. 

After a series of hit movies and a show on the WB network, she has not appeared on screen since "Easy A" in 2010, saying she was retiring from acting to focus on fashion. CNN reports that she had been arrested for two hit-and-runs in 2012, for which, according to CBS News, she had to enter into financial settlements. In 2014, she accused her father of abuse, then recanted, blaming the "microchip in [her] brain," according to Fox8. 

Shortly after, New York Daily News reported that she was photographed sleeping in a mall because she could not afford a hotel. Owing to her mental health issues, her parents had been granted a mental health conservatorship because, you know, the brain chip thing. According to the Los Angeles Times, she had spent $1.2 million in a few months and had twice withdrawn $100,000 in cash. Her parents listed her net worth at nearly $4 million then. This may be the rare case where having parents take over their child's finances saves them from poverty.  

People reported that, as of 2019, Bynes graduated from the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising after checking into a facility to treat her mental health issues. Despite the tumult, she has $6 million, according to Wealthy Genius.

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.

Christy Carlson Romano was an integral part of the Disney Channel in the first decade of the 2000s. She played teenager Ren Stevens on the sitcom "Even Stevens," and voiced the title character on the animated "Kim Possible." But then both franchises ended production — "Even Stevens" in 2003 and "Kim Possible" in 2007. "My biggest thing about child actors, you aren't told that the work is gonna slow down. In fact, I was told the opposite. Specifically, by my mom, some of my team, even my money manager at the time," Romano said in a YouTube video called "How I Lost All My Money." 

So, Carlson took the portion of her earnings that had been set aside under California law and used that to attend college, only to drop out after a year and a half and assume that she was still pulling in substantial royalties on her Disney shows and would continue to do so. She spent a lot of money on designer clothes and cars, and dropped a lot of money on psychic readings. Carlson estimates that the year she was 21, she made $1 million. "And in that same year, I spent it," she said. "I really regret not investing my money wisely. I didn't get a house. I didn't take any money and store it away.

Charlie Chaplin discovered Jackie Coogan when the latter was performing on the vaudeville circuit, according to The New York Times. Then he made the 1921 movie "The Kid" with Coogan, launching the five-year-old to mega-stardom. According to the Associated Press, Coogan earned $4 million in acting paychecks by the time he turned 21, and another $5 million or so from the sales of merchandise bearing his image. But since Coogan had been a minor when he earned that fortune, his mother and stepfather controlled the money and allocated $6.25 a week to Coogan. When he reached legal adulthood, Coogan was denied access to this money but then discovered that only $600,000 was left. His parents had squandered the rest.

Coogan successfully sued his parents, according to the Library of Congress, but after the subtraction of legal fees, the actor wound up with $126,000. That would tide him over for years, or it would have to, because the former child star was seen as washed up and couldn't get much work in Hollywood. Furthermore, MGM head Louis B. Mayer, a fervent and public celebrator of mothers, according to Boyhood Studies, boycotted Coogan for daring to sue his own mom. Coogan appeared in only a few movies between 1927 and 1935 and wound up taking small roles in B-movies, before enjoying a moderate comeback in the 1960s as Uncle Fester on "The Addams Family" TV series.

After a variety of single-episode appearances on early 1980s TV shows like "Little House on the Prairie," "CHiPS," "Newhart," and "Trapper John, M.D.," kid actor Jerry Suprian's career peaked with a starring role on "Small Wonder." The 1985 to 1989 syndicated family sitcom centered on the Lawson family, which included a roboticist dad, a robot everyone pretended was a human girl, and Jamie, the scheming biological child who got himself and his android into scrapes each week. After "Small Wonder" was canceled in 1989, the then-16-year-old Suprian never acted on screen again.

Two years later, according to the National Enquirer, Suprian entered into a relationship with an exotic dancer, which he believes marked the beginning of the end of his financial ruin. "When I was 18, I dated a stripper and she took what was left of my trust fund," Suprian said of his "Small Wonder" earnings. "Then one of my advisers stole a half million dollars from me." With his childhood fortune decimated, Suprian worked in steakhouses for the better part of 15 years, up until 2010 when a bad economic situation led to his layoff from a restaurant in suburban Las Vegas. As of 2012, Suprian was living under a bridge in a town in California near the home of his brother. "And while he helps me with hot meals and a shower, he doesn't have the room for me to stay there," Suprian said.

After playing winsome and plucky kids on numerous TV shows in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Danny Bonaduce landed his biggest and most famous role in 1970. For nearly 100 episodes, he'd play precocious jokester drummer Danny Partridge on the family band musical sitcom "The Partridge Family." He'd eventually book episodic TV gigs and work extensively in radio, but in the immediate aftermath of the end of "The Partridge Family," the actor found himself economically destitute, dependent on drugs, and virtually homeless.

At age 15 in 1974, Bonaduce moved out of his home and was on his own on the streets of Los Angeles. "I lived right behind this dumpster, but I lived in my car," Bonaduce said on "Oprah: Where Are They Now?" (via HuffPost). "I was still famous and people had no idea I lived behind the dumpster. I'd be taking pictures with people and signing autographs." When fans were out of sight, Bonaduce would surreptitiously head back to his parked car near Grauman's Chinese Theater.