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This dude reportedly said "Actors are cattle." That would mean child actors are veal.

When one of my preteen co-stars didn't seem that into acting, I asked him why he even bothered doing it. "For the money," he said. I hadn't considered that. My own money was an abstract concept: locked in a bank somewhere, to be used only after I turned 18. I was just acting because I liked it. But this kid was supporting his family.

This isn't a new problem. Back in the 1930s, Jackie Coogan was not only the biggest child star in the world, but one of the biggest stars, period. The kid had $4 million (more than $48 million in today's money) to his name, but when he turned 21, he found that his mother and manager/stepfather had spent almost all of it. Coogan sued his parents, and while he only got $126,000, he did get a law named after him. That's a nice consolation prize, right?

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And he also went on to play a character named after something a boil does.

The Coogan Law isn't perfect, though: While it has long protected a kid's right to a trust fund, it still only protects 15 percent of a child's earnings. There are still lots of ways parents can misuse their kid's money. And it's easy for them to get away with it, because most kids don't have the guts to take their own parents to court and scream about all the things they can't handle (the truth, and so on).