24 ***^ Friday 16 August 2019 The Daily TelegraphArts
Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, 12-year-old
Jodie Foster, playing child prostitute
Iris, was meticulously taken through
the special effects process.
Foster was also given
psychological testing before the
film, satisfying all that she would not
be unduly affected by the material.When child
stars make
difficult films
Young stars: Jodie
Foster as a child
prostitute in Taxi
Driver, above.
Below, Good Boys.
Inset left, Natalie
Portman in LéonI
n Good Boys, the new film from
producers Seth Rogen and Evan
Goldberg, boys on the brink
of adolescence have comic
encounters with sex aids, sex
dolls and drugs. By his own
admission, 12-year-old actor Jacob
Tremblay swears “like in every single
scene”. It has an R rating – 15 in the
UK – meaning that its young stars
are not legally allowed to see it. It is
appropriately inappropriate.
In the film business, children are
legally protected against anything
obviously exploitative or sexual on
productions. Labour laws regarding
what child actors can do (working
hours, permits, on-set teacher
requirements, etc) differ from
country to country, state to state.
California, where the major
studios are still clinging on, boasts
the strictest, longest list of rules,
including a ban of on-set cigarettes
and a hard line on any nudity – a
scene in Zac Snyder’s Man of Steel
featuring a naked baby Superman
was filmed in Vancouver instead.
Otherwise though, the morals and
ethics are subjective.
Creatively, filmmakers can gun
for whatever they like, but the
parents have the power. At 12,
Brooke Shields starred as a child
prostitute in 1978’s Pretty Baby.
While the film caused some
furore, her mother Teri – as
has Brooke – defended the
decision, and the content.
Teri was fiercely protective of
her choices. When TV host Phil
Donahue covered the film on his
talk show, audience members
shouted at her that her
decision to involve her
daughter in Pretty Baby
was terrible. “Have you
seen the film?” askedTeri. They hadn’t. Teri was also
protective of her daughter’s working
conditions – in her memoir, Brooke
wrote that her mother was subject to
a murder attempt after reporting that
Brooke was being overworked.
Script approval is a major factor.
Chloë Grace Moretz began acting at
six, and her mother Teri and older
brother Trevor – who was also her
acting coach – were proactive with all
of her material, reading all the scripts
her agents sent to her.
Matthew Vaughn’s 2010 action
comedy Kick-Ass caused an outcry
in some quarters, but the family was
fully on board. Chloë was 11 when
she starred in the film, her character
Hit-Girl undertaking many a shooting
spree, and her mother and brother
constantly emphasised the actress/
character boundaries to her.
Hit-Girl’s infamous line, “OK, you
c----, let’s see what you can do now,”
was from Mark Millar’s comic book
source material, but not scripted for
the film. On set, though, the scene
wasn’t working, and a joint decision
was made with Moretz and her
mother to try it out, said Vaughn.
“I said it in one take,” said
Moretz a couple of years later,
batting away the controversy.
“It wasn’t like I was going to go
around saying it all over, you
know? There’s no cursing in
my household, but I knew
what it meant to make
a movie.” She would be
grounded, she said, if any
such vocabulary spilt into
her real life.
The incongruity of
children swearing has been
a staple of Hollywood for
as long as filmmakers
have been allowed to
push such boundaries. InALAMY; APHow are youngsters involved in grown-up
movies safeguarded? With ‘Good Boys’ in
cinemas now, Alex Godfrey investigates
the 1973 film The Exorcist, Linda Blair
as the possessed Regan had to launch
into several demonic tirades. Blair,
who was 13 at the time of filming, said
she “knew they were bad words”, but
would never have said them in any
other situation.
She was, though, perfectly
comfortable spouting them on set.
Director William Friedkin hired
her precisely because she seemed
so breezy about inhabiting the
character, laughing and joking off
camera, instantly switching to full-
blown, foul-mouthed possession as
required. The first time that veteran
actor Max von Sydow heard her spew
her obscenities, he was so startled
that he forgot his lines.
Requisite work is done to protect
child actors from any actual trauma.
If the crew are doing right by their
young cast, the element of play is
consistently emphasised. During
the climactic bloodbath in MartinToday, there is an increasing
trend to give young actors on
such productions access to a child
psychologist (as is the case on zombie
drama series The Walking Dead).
Not that it’s obligatory. Bill
Skarsgård, who played the terrifying
clown Pennywise in 2017’s Stephen
King adaptation It, said that during
one sequence, a group of young extras
hadn’t seen him until cameras rolled,
causing some of them to shake with
fear and some to cry. “I realised, ‘Holy
s---. What am I doing? What is this?
This is horrible’,” he later said.
Sometimes, such content goes
over kids’ heads. “Children do not
understand the same things as adults,”
said Linda Blair in 2000, explaining
how she was able to perform The
Exorcist’s more shocking scenes,
particularly the crucifix masturbation.
“I never knew what that was about,”
she said.
The cast of Good Boys have said
similar of some of their racier
moments. Brady Noon has said he
didn’t know what the sex toys in the
film were. “My mom tells me what I
need to know and that’s it,” he said.
Regardless of all the safeguards,
and of all the parental protection, the
final product can throw up surprises.
Natalie Portman was 12 when she
starred in Luc Besson’s 1994 drama
Léon. Portman’s parents’ concerns led
to Besson removing or softening some
content.
However, her mother admitted she
“squirmed a bit” when she saw the
“little sexual twists and turns, which
are different from what you read in the
script”. They turned down an offer for
her to star in Adrian Lyne’s 1997 Lolita.
Response to a film can also colour
experiences. Last January at the Los
Angeles Women’s March, Portman
said that as a result of some salacious
remarks in reviews, as well as
some fan-mail that included a rape
fantasy, she decided to emphasise
how “bookish” she was, and built a
reputation for being prudish, covered
her body and rejected films with
kissing scenes.
“At 13 years old,” she said, “the
message from our culture was clear to
me. I felt the need to cover my body
and to inhibit my expression and my
work in order to send my own message
to the world: that I’m someone worthy
of safety and respect.”
And despite their explanations of
their experiences, when former child
actors have children themselves, their
viewpoints can differ from their own
parents’ decisions. In an interview
with Vanity Fair last year, Brooke
Shields was asked if she would allow
her own daughter to star as a child
prostitute, as she once did.
“In this environment,” she said,
“and with social media and with the
dangers on that level and just being a
mom now, looking at my 11-year-old,
I would not facilitate it.”
As ever, the power is with the
parents.The first time
Max von
Sydow heard
Linda Blairspew out her
obscenities,
he was sostartled that
he forgothis lines
Good Boys is in
cinemas now.
Read Tim Robey’s
review at
telegraph.co.uk/
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