should there be child actors?

Two recent New Yorker pieces posed a question I'd never thought about, should there be child actors? For me the answer was a fast "yes." Just as I'd give a fast "no" to the question of whether there should be billionaires. The first mention I noticed was in Adam Gopnik's piece "What Do We Want from Our Child Stars?" which survey's the history of child acting, from Shirley Temple to Jeanette McCurdy. He makes a good case, with a century of evidence, that child actors have always been exploited and discarded by the entertainment business.

The other New Yorker piece that asked the question was Emily Nussbaum's epic bio of Keri Russell, "Keri Russell's Emotional Transparencey Has Anchored Three Decades of TV" which includes this passage:

I have no idea if it's the case, but I would guess there are plenty of former child actors who have mostly fond memories of the experience. I was never on TV as a kid, but I did get paid to perform in a traveling production of "The Music Man" when I was 15. And at that time in my life, I really loved acting. I recently found a personal essay I wrote at that time and I was absolutely bereft about returning to the monotony of high school after a summer spent with theaterfolk. And I mostly enjoyed high school!

I couldn't find any Music Man photos, but here I am rehearsing for my high school production of Peter Pan

Anyway, after a week in which I happened to watch multiple movies starring Elle Fanning, I got to thinking about some of my favorite child actor performances. The one that jumps to mind first is Gaby Hoffman as Opal Ingles in Nora Ephron's directorial debut "This Is My Life"

She's so funny and real, her performance totally makes the movie. With all due respect to the goddess Nora Ephron, Gaby was better known for her string of other performances as a young actor: Field of Dreams, Sleepless In Seattle, Now and Then, Uncle Buck, etc. And speaking of Uncle Buck, I just found this amazing quote from an interview when she was 10 years old talking about her costar:

She also grew up to be a great adult actor, I particularly liked "C'mon C'mon" which featured another incredible child performance by Woody Norman, a kid I had no idea was British until reading about him after watching the movie! The French kid in Anatomy of a Fall was also great (maybe not as great as the dog though). I also really responded to child actors back when I was a kid myself, the one that really stands out in my memory was Christian Bale in Empire of the Sun. I even convinced my chorus director to let me sing the Welsh song his boy choir sings to open the film, but I was too lazy to learn the Welsh so I sang it in English.

I guess what I'm trying to say with all this is, like with magic mushrooms, child acting is all about set and setting. If you have a director who treats children well, and the kids themselves love acting, I think they should act. Maybe we can make the entertainment business a healthier experience for all, including children who love acting. Hey, a kid can dream.