It was a classic among apparent misstatements that were actually, painfully true: “I think I was detrimental to my own career,” Justin Bieber said in the now-infamous March 6 deposition in which he pouts, mouths off, refuses to answer questions and generally defines 21st century Hollywood brathood.
Bieber’s legal team hastened to add that Bieber, who was responding to the question of whether the singer Usher was “instrumental to your career,” meant to say “instrumental” instead of “detrimental.” Bieber’s stupidity was brilliant.
Otherwise, to watch the Bieber deposition is to long for the healing salve of a well-timed slap to the chops, or at least for someone to tell the Biebs he’s grounded.
Entitled, narcissistic, spoiled, oblivious, obnoxious: Why are child stars so out of it? Bieber was a fresh reminder of how swiftly and predictably Hollywood’s kiddie cuties turn showbiz Mugabes. Another hint was Lindsay Lohan’s painful new reality show “Lindsay,” on the Oprah Winfrey Network, as is the reappearance of the not-yet-quite-forgotten plagiarist Shia LaBeouf, in theaters in the art film “Nymphomaniac Vol. I” March 21.
Last Sunday, Oprah’s network rolled out the first episode of the “documentary” (you know: classy) series “Lindsay,” to a thin audience of 693,000 souls.
She evidently wasn’t the one in charge of the final edit. Even so, how could she be so lacking in awareness? She actually whined about a judge (one of many she’s come to know) for getting all . . . judge-y.
Actual quote: “The judge at the time . . . kept making me stay there [in jail]. What they were doing was punishing me instead of trying to help me.” Fancy that, punishment after conviction.
She added that because of the interest of paparazzi, she feels like a prisoner “all the time.” You know, like Mandela or Sakharov.
By comparison to the Biebs and LiLo, LaBeouf is merely an insufferable twit. Last month he showed off his new film by wearing a paper bag over his head with the words “I AM NOT FAMOUS ANYMORE” written on it. In the corner was a barcode: Because he’s a product, you see. If so — can we return him to the jerk store?
In January, LaBeouf was caught on video apparently head-butting a guy in a bar. It was at least the fourth time press reports placed him in barroom dustups. And being head-butted by LaBeouf is a dangerous thing: His skull could catch you right in the crotch if you don’t bend down at the right moment.
Last December, LaBeouf admitted stealing the idea for a short film from artist Daniel Clowes and ripped off a cutesy description for his website from the publisher PictureBox. In a comic book he used Charles Bukowski’s words unattributed. He even borrows his mea culpas: One he issued to Alec Baldwin after getting fired from a Broadway play was lifted from the 2009 “How to Be a Man” issue of Esquire.
You expect these people to be brainless. But why so heedless?
Maybe because, fawned over by their clucking parents, they live in a fantasy world. The first inklings of reality — that, say, you’re not allowed to act out when you’re driving a car, the way you always have been at home — tend to be shattering and liberating at the same time. Adolescence is a time of adaptation for everyone. For child stars it can be more like a metamorphosis. Except a nasty looking caterpillar emerges from a butterfly.
The child stars whose parents went to lengths to give them at least somewhat normal childhoods seem to have turned out best. Yet even Shirley Temple, whose parents insisted she keep a level head, had an early-adulthood freakout, meeting her first husband at 15 and marrying him two years later, during WWII. Yet Temple became the model for all subsequent child stars as a highly regarded ambassador.
Other child stars often did well simply by leaving their old lives behind. Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen seem to have retired as young as Temple did, but like her they moved on with no regrets and now seem content as fashion designers. At 17, “Growing Pains” star Kirk Cameron converted to evangelical Christianity, noting, “I shifted my focus from 100 percent on the show to 100 percent on [my new life].” Cameron was never a star actor again, but he also never got arrested or became a rehab case. He’s been married to the same woman for 22 years and he’s had a successful second career in evangelism.
Maybe LaBeouf, Lohan and Bieber will come back and follow child stars who just kept working without incident until they were adult stars: Christina Ricci, Neil Patrick Harris, Jodie Foster. But it’s hard to avoid the thought that each of them is his or her own worst enemy, and what they really need to escape from is their own personalities. Shia LaBeouf? Go build houses in Borneo. Justin Bieber? Son, you need to work on an oil rig.
And Lindsay Lohan? Join the Marines.