As far as modern occupations go, there are few more insidious and controversial than child actor. Former child star Leelee Kimmel (neé Sobieski) once said she didn’t know “why it’s legal for a child to act,” and called Hollywood a “gross industry” that capitalizes on children’s appearances. A new story from Bella Thorne seems to exemplify her question.
Speaking to Emily Ratajkowski for a new episode of her High Low podcast, the Shake It Up star recalls a specifically memorable audition from her early career as a child actor. According to Thorne, an unnamed male director once reached out to a casting director (who in turn contacted Thorne’s mother) to accuse Thorne of flirting with him and making him “uncomfortable” during a casting session. Thorne was 10 years old at the time.
Needless to say, facing accusations of inappropriate flirting when she was still pre-pubescent left Thorne in disbelief. “’What the fuck are you talking about man?’” she recalls thinking. “I don’t give a fuck what the fuck I said. I don’t care if I said ‘eat my pussy right now.’ She is 10 years old! Why ever would you think that? Why? Why?”
Thorne continues: “You’re in a director session—you can’t really say or do much. You do the scene, you say hello, you walk out. There’s no time to like ‘let me go sit on your lap’ or like make you feel uncomfortable. What the fuck are you talking about?”
Ratajkowski, who has faced her own struggles with Hollywood’s leering and entitled eye, noted both the absurdity of the director’s accusation and the way it exemplifies some of the controversies about child stardom today.
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“Just putting that on a 10-year-old child and making it like they made an adult man uncomfortable is insane… and then that was relayed to a casting director who was happy to relay that to your mom,” Ratajkowski sums up the vomit-inducing tale. “If you need a more fucked up story about Hollywood and, like, pedophilia and the sexualization of children, I don’t know if there is one.”