When it comes to sudden bursts of sobbing, I tend to cry mostly where I’m meant to: a sad commercial about a lonely pensioner; anything to do with baby animals in crisis; the entire back catalogue of Joni Mitchell.
So it was a surprise when I felt tears stinging my eyes as I watched Bindi Irwin and Derek Hough take on the rumba – complete with “that lift” from Dirty Dancing – on the US Dancing With the Stars. What was I, a grown woman without the slightest interest in the Irwin dynasty or celebrity dance contests (I’m more of a So You Think You Can Dance type), with a well-developed distaste for anything Society of the Spectacle-esque, doing frantically scouring the net each week for the news of Bindi’s latest Dancing triumph?
It is, in fact, the same response I’ve had to Irwin’s routines throughout this season, and will likely experience again today and tomorrow as she faces the Dancing finale, the favourite out of four remaining celebs: a curious mix of pride, affection and, in some way, relief. Relief because Irwin seems on target to escape the jaws of “former child stardom” more or less unscathed, which is not a privilege afforded to many who’ve grown up in the spotlight.
There is a curious, almost parental response to seeing former child stars become adults. I recall going to see Cameron Crowe’s middling We Bought A Zoo and feeling quite overcome with emotion at the sight of Patrick Fugit – formerly the bright-eyed teen reporter William Miller in Almost Famous – all grown up. It was all I could do to stop myself from running to the screen, placing my hand on the projection of his face, and cooing, “Last time I saw you, you were only this big!”
In a poignant Washington Post profile, immediately after the release of Little Children, his big comeback role, the actor Jackie Earle Haley discussed the perils of growing up in the spotlight. “When you’re a child actor and you’re a celebrity,” he said, “your identity gets attached to that.
“My self-esteem got attached to this thing that wasn’t real, and when that stopped, you’re stuck with an identity that doesn’t exist. That’s a deep hole to climb out of.”
To climb out of that hole in the shadow of the enduring tragedy of your famous father’s death would be a whole different reckoning. Seeing Bindi pay tribute to Steve in her Dancing contemporary routine – initially discussing his legacy in the confident and affectionate way we’ve come to expect from her, before crumbling into shaking sobs at the dance’s conclusion – was sobering.
The Natalie Portmans and Joseph Gordon Levitts of the former-child-star pantheon are few and far between. And, in an increasingly mean-spirited celebrity news cycle, who’d attempt to grow up after a childhood career without entering witness protection? Time and 24/7 content has not been kind to Haley Joel Osment, Jake Lloyd, Amanda Bynes, Britney Spears and countless other former child stars.
Writing in Salon after Bynes’s well publicised meltdown last year, Prachi Gupta reflected on the uphill battle former child stars face as they age. “There’s a reason that successful child stars are seen as the exception, not the norm. Who could reasonably expect Britney Spears to be a functional adult when at 16 she was the world’s No 1 sex symbol?”
Until recently, you might have counted Irwin among those names (after all, who can forget her 2006 rap single, Trouble In The Jungle?). It’s possible – nay, likely – that her appearance on Dancing With the Stars is part of a carefully calibrated PR offensive that will see her delivered from awkward teenagerdom and back into the limelight as a capable and popular young adult.
But for all of Irwin’s assuredness on the dance floor and in front of the camera, it’s in the behind-the-scenes footage that I find my “she made it!” tendencies going into overdrive, because it’s there that she’s precisely not the assured, PR-friendly teen that we’ve come to know. Watching her goof around with Hough and attempt the famous lift in what appears to be a millpond out the back of the studio, grunting “oh, jeez!” and yelling like a big dag, it’s clear that she’s going to be A-OK.
And one thing’s definitely guaranteed: I’ll cry when she dances in the finale.
