As awards season heats up, watchdogs warn of fashion and film schemes meant to part parents from their savings by exploiting naivety and lust for instant fame

Tinseltown glints especially bright this time of year. Awards ceremonies, fashion shows and auditions for new TV shows draw thousands of would-be actors and models to Los Angeles, the promise of fame and fortune shimmering in the winter sun.



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Many are children and teens shepherded by parents from across the United States. They rove Hollywood clutching résumés, glossy headshots and entertainment industry contacts. It is, after all, the season of readings, red carpets and catwalks.

But in many cases it is a mirage. A simulacrum of film-making and high fashion which misleads, exploits and abuses victims.

“It’s smoke and mirrors. Most of the shows are fake,” said Chris Thompson, an industry watchdog. “People come here from the midwest, from military families, and they get taken in because they don’t know how the business works.”

People posing as talent scouts, casting directors, fashion designers and other industry players ramp up scams in January and February to blend in with legitimate events, said Anne Henry, co-founder of BizParentz Foundation, a nonprofit which advises families in the entertainment industry. “This is the peak.”

Ruses range from overpriced and largely useless acting and modelling courses to ersatz films, magazines and events – a mendacious la-la land where stars do not waltz in sunsets but parents do fritter away their savings.

“The parents of child models and actors are the most heavily preyed on in the fake entertainment industry,” said Katie Taylor, a casting director. “It’s got way worse because of social media. It’s taken off in lots of different ways.”

Would-be showbiz parents are notorious for losing perspective as they tout offspring to Hollywood. Linda Stone, a veteran studio teacher who protects and educates children on sets, said some felt pressured to conceal potential gigs from friends.

“They learn not to say who they’re auditioning for because word will spread,” she said. “This isn’t a normal childhood.”

Some parents try too hard to please film-makers, said Stone. During a nighttime shoot for the 1999 film Three Kings, for example, she opposed a scene with a naked newborn baby in a tent, saying it was too cold.

“I’d like four layers on,” she said. “But the mother said no, it was fine. But she did ask for makeup to cover the [baby’s] rash.”

This mentality, said Stone, was just one step removed from that exposed in Sacha Baron Cohen’s 2009 mockumentary Brüno, in which parents agreed to subject their babies to “bees, wasps and hornets”, “extremely rapid acceleration”, “dead or dying animals” and “lit phosphorous”.

For many parents, the motive was not money but glamour – a sprinkle of stardust, said Taylor. “It’s the ego stroke, to be totally honest. It’s about living vicariously and the bragging rights. It can become like an addiction, where they need a fix all the time. Those are the ones that fall victim.

“Their desperation blinds them.”

The explosion in social media and reality shows like American Idol has fuelled demand for perceived authenticity – real people, not actors – only to open the door to artifice and delusion.

“We used to think stars were something special and unique,” said Henry. “But the whole industry has switched gears. Now we think anybody can be a star. Which means every parent is open to scams.”

Traditional ploys include overpriced courses and publicity photographs, pitched on empty promises of catching the eye of casting directors and talent scouts. “Now they say, ‘I can make you a YouTube star, or get you followers.’ It’s more fame-oriented because the culture values being famous more than what you can do,” said Henry.

Her nonprofit successfully lobbied California to enact laws against so-called “pay to play” schemes which charge people to work, or, worse, charge people to do fake work. New York also has strong rules. Many other states lack safeguards, allowing opportunists to promise fast tracks to stardom.

Parents pay thousands of dollars for elaborate publicity shots, not realizing casting directors prefer unadorned headshots, and even more for purported modelling academies, not realizing the industry scorns them, according to Taylor.

“You don’t need classes and fancy pictures,” she said, “but many parents don’t know any better.



“We all know that it’s bogus. They’re not places casting agents go to scout talent. It doesn’t do anything for the children other than put them in a precarious position to be victimised.”

Controversy also swirls over the Young Artist Awards, a fringe annual event for those aged five to 21 that hands out statuettes but lacks stars and takes place in an ageing hotel where middle-aged male autograph collectors are among those seeking out nominees. Some former organisers have had troubling backgrounds with minors, including two men convicted of sex crimes.

Organisers for this year’s YAA event did not respond to a request for comment.

Elijah Wood spoke out about “darkness” in Hollywood’s underbelly last year, briefly reviving a debate about abuse which blazed during Michael Jackson’s child 2005 molestation trial.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Chris Thompson. Photograph: Rory Carroll/The Guardian

Watchdogs said scammers also plagued the fashion industry, including a “pay to model” tactic in which little-known designers charge hefty prices for outfits for catwalk events. Some take place at the same time and a few blocks from real fashion shows, giving the impression they are connected, though they are often ignored or derided by the industry.

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“Parents may find [these events] in their Facebook feeds or message boards and are somehow persuaded that their children could be the next supermodels,” said Susan Scafidi, a fashion law professor. “These scams delegitimise the rest of the industry.”

Parents seeking to kickstart children’s modelling careers also pay online magazines to run photos, said Thompson, the watchdog, who chronicles scams on a Facebook page. She has counted 32 new magazines in recent months – apparently synchronised with fake shows which will run in the shadows of LA and NY fashion weeks. “They’re giving these kids false identities. It’s not real.”

What constitutes reality now seems up for debatein a “post-truth” era where people choose their news, fake or otherwise, and the president peddles “alternative facts”.

Yet now the dream factory, of all places, is blowing the whistle on fantasy. Henry, of the BizParentz Foundation, said Hollywood has a duty to help parents and children recognise fakery.

“It’s only real to them because they think there is another step up the rung of the ladder,” she said. “But it takes other people to make it real.”