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At 16, \u200b\u200bChristy Carlson Romano was living the dream of every girl born in the late \u201990s. Simultaneously starring in Disney Channel\u2019s Even Stevens as Ren Stevens, voicing Kim Possible, and playing Captain Jennifer Stone in the DCOM Cadet Kelly<\/a>, Romano seemed on track to a long, successful career in the spotlight. And yet, in the vital transitional years from child star to adult actress that followed, she failed to \u201cfind her type\u201d and virtually disappeared from public memory, resulting in her exclusion from Vanity Fair\u2019s iconic \u201cIt\u2019s Raining Teens\u201d cover<\/a> in 2003 and recent public debates about Disney Channel\u2019s Mount Rushmore<\/a>.<\/p>\n Now 42, Romano is looking back at her coming-of-age years in her new memoir, Once Upon a Trainwreck: The Fall and Rise of a Child Star, out now. She reveals that coming out of her prime Disney Channel days, she faced severe financial and personal hardship, struggling with teen alcoholism and drug use, emotional and sexual abuse, and bouts of depression that upended her career and life. Her memoir adds another damning account to the former child-star canon, alongside Jennette McCurdy\u2019s I\u2019m Glad My Mom Died<\/a> and the late Hayden Panettiere\u2019s This Is Me: A Reckoning<\/a>. Romano recounts the toxicity of her past life as a child star in the book, while writing reflexively to her daughters in between chapters from her present position as a mother, wife, recovered alcoholic, and social-media influencer living in Texas. Here are the biggest takeaways from Romano\u2019s tell-all.<\/p>\n Originally from Connecticut, Romano was scouted by a talent manager for kids while performing in a dance competition. (Luckily, the talent agent wasn\u2019t in attendance for an earlier competition where she peed herself onstage). Romano was set up with classes and auditions in New York City so she could become a \u201ctriple threat\u201d and a \u201cbooker\u201d \u2014 and Romano made it her mission to do so. At 6, Romano booked her first role as an orphan in an Atlanta production of Annie, which opened doors for her to secure a later part in the first national tour of The Will Rogers Follies.<\/p>\n By the time she was 13, she also had minor roles in major movies like Henry Fool with Parker Posey and Woody Allen\u2019s Everyone Says I Love You with Julia Roberts, Goldie Hawn, Edward Norton, and Drew Barrymore.<\/p>\n Balancing school, auditions, and bookings became difficult for Romano by the time middle school came around, so she enrolled in an elite New York City private school specifically for kids working in the arts-and-entertainment industry. Romano remembers Culkin as \u201cabout the most famous kid actor who ever lived because of Home Alone\u201d and therefore the most popular in school, dressing like a grungy skater kid and pothead. \u201cI can only think that he\u2019s such a waste of talent,\u201d Romano wrote of Culkin at the time. \u201cAnd I feel embarrassed that he goes to our school looking like that.\u201d<\/p>\n Later, Scarlett Johansson joins the school, and Romano describes her as the \u201cexact opposite of her\u201d: \u201cShe\u2019s pretty short, she\u2019s got big boobs, swollen lips, and grown-up curves, plus dirty-blond hair and squinty green eyes that look like they couldn\u2019t care less what anyone thinks of her.\u201d Although the two became acquaintances, Romano always felt \u201cinsecure\u201d and \u201cuneasy\u201d around Johansson, who would openly talk about more mature topics like her period, hookups, and the parties she\u2019d attend. Romano even recalled a time when Johansson tried to make a move on her older brother during a group sleepover at her house \u2026 not typically the makings of a close friendship.<\/p>\n Though most people probably recognize Romano as Ren Stevens on Even Stevens, she didn\u2019t originally want the role. At 16, the actress felt like she had outgrown Disney; in fact, she felt like she had outgrown acting altogether. And yet, she secured the role because she matched Ren\u2019s try-hard, perfectionist energy, and her chemistry test with Shia LaBeouf read like a real-sibling dynamic; that is, he annoyed the shit out of her.<\/p>\n On the set of Even Stevens, Romano and LaBeouf hardly interacted outside of scenes, and the onscreen Ren-Louis rivalry would only exacerbate their real-life tension. Like the dynamic between an actual younger brother and older sister, LaBeouf irked Romano, and she envied that he was somehow always able to get away with things. Still, when she once overheard LaBeouf\u2019s dad yelling at him from her dressing room, she felt for him. According to her, their final scene together in the show felt like a real good-bye to each other:<\/p>\n \u201cSorry about blaming you for everything,\u201d says Ren.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cRen, look. I\u2019m your brother. I love messing with you,\u201d Louis says. \u201cBut I would never do anything to hurt you.\u201d<\/p>\n Photo: George Lange\/Disney Channel via Getty Images\n <\/p>\n Much of Romano\u2019s motivation to chase stardom and perfection stemmed from her mother, the stereotypical \u201cstage mom\u201d or \u201cmomager\u201d archetype. Romano remembers her mother instilling in her the need to always act professional and agreeable \u2014 lessons that followed Romano into adulthood and made her easily exploitable.<\/p>\n The two were each other\u2019s closest companions for most of Romano\u2019s childhood and career, with her mother accompanying her everywhere she went for roles. Later in life, Romano felt like her mother took advantage of her, using her to escape an unhappy life and marriage and using her money to support a new L.A. lifestyle.<\/p>\n Romano\u2019s resentment toward blondes comes up a lot throughout the book. At Disney, she often felt typecast as the \u201cbrunette, bad, unlikeable one,\u201d while blond girls would play opposite her as \u201cthe sweet, fun one.\u201d Though she got along well with her blonde Cadet Kelly co-star, Hilary Duff, Romano always viewed Duff as her competition. She\u2019d often hear Disney executives saying that Lizzie McGuire and Hilary Duff were the \u201cnext big thing,\u201d while she gradually fell to the wayside.<\/p>\n By the time Romano finished Even Stevens and Cadet Kelly, she was \u201ctoo old to play one of the Disney Channel kids and too young to be a mom or a teacher,\u201d so she became useless. While her past co-stars like Duff and LaBeouf broke out of child roles and maintained steady jobs, she was told by agents that she wasn\u2019t pretty enough or that she would book more roles if she got a nose job (which she never did, though she did get a boob job after watching herself in Cadet Kelly).<\/p>\n Feeling forgotten by the industry and hoping to retain some sense of normalcy, Romano sought to shed her \u201cDisney Kid\u201d label by leaving L.A. and starting college. But without any prior experience of navigating life outside the industry, Romano fell into bad habits: She started overspending her Disney money, partying all the time, binge drinking, and using drugs to cope with feelings of inadequacy. She also spoke bluntly about when she \u201ctried being bulimic\u201d at one point \u201cjust to feel something.\u201d<\/p>\n Romano writes about several toxic ex-boyfriends whom she once thought were \u201cthe one\u201d despite their manipulative and suspect behavior toward her and her family. She was engaged twice, cheated on, had an ectopic pregnancy, and had her heart played with and broken over and over. She claims that one ex-boyfriend even threatened to sell her nudes online, and she had to get the FBI involved.<\/p>\n As a child, she alleges that she was flashed by a neighbor in his L.A. apartment, and later, in her 20s, she claims she was sexually assaulted by someone from her Al-Anon group in a nightclub. She writes to her daughters at the end of the chapter that discloses her darkest moments:<\/p>\n \u201cIf you should ever lose yourself, please know that the way back isn\u2019t through numbing the pain or running from it. The way through is sitting with discomfort until you remember who you are underneath all the performance. You find yourself by stopping\u2014stopping the chaos, the substances, the toxic relationships, the constant motion that keeps you from feeling anything real. I found myself by finally getting quiet enough to hear my own voice again. Not my mother\u2019s voice, not the industry\u2019s voice, not some man\u2019s voice telling me who I should be.\u201d<\/p>\n In her notes to her daughters that appear at the end of each chapter, Romano often writes about the pricelessness of childhood and the importance of having choice as a child. Though she wasn\u2019t forced into child stardom, she felt like she couldn\u2019t really escape it either. Before she realized it, her childhood was over, and all she was left with was a sense of worthlessness and a batch of self-destructive, people-pleasing tendencies. She spent the rest of her life trying to find her place in the world, outside of the spotlight, but, according to her, she\u2019s finally found it in motherhood.<\/p>\n \u201cMy opposition to child labor in Hollywood \u2014 and high-functioning kids training and working in any elite field \u2014 isn\u2019t about money. It\u2019s about the pricelessness of childhood itself,\u201d she writes. \u201cThere\u2019s a fine line between supporting a child\u2019s dreams and setting them up for failure \u2026 When you spend your childhood being rewarded for compliance, for never complaining, for being professional and easy and grateful, you lose the ability to recognize when someone is taking advantage of you. That muscle never develops.\u201d<\/p>\n Photo: The Walt Disney Company via Getty Images\n <\/p>\n Sign up for the Vulture Daily<\/p>\n An entertainment newsletter for the pop-culture obsessed.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n![\"ABC\u2019s](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/eaa00fdd434f1100f5b9f2330c18238e73-Christy-Carlson-Romano-secondary-2.rvertical.w570.jpg\")
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