Demi Lovato is looking back on how their “traumatic” time as a child actor left them being less than kind to people around them.
While discussing their upcoming documentary, “Child Star,” in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the singer and actor admitted to feeling immense “guilt” over how they treated people, both on set and off.
“I didn’t realize that child stardom could be traumatic — and it isn’t traumatic for everyone, but for me, it was,” explained Lovato, who is now 31.
Carrying that pain prompted the one-time Disney Channel talent to act out while working on the show “Sonny with a Chance” and TV movie “Camp Rock 2,” something they say they regret to this day.
“I think about people in the wardrobe department on my TV show because I’d go in there in bad moods all the time, and I worry about guest stars that came on or the other actors or the people during ‘Camp Rock 2,’” the “Confident” singer remembered.
“And it’s easy to excuse that behavior because I was so young and in so much pain, but I’m really remorseful, and that’s a guilt that stays with you forever.”
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Lovato said their angst also impacted their family life, which was complicated by the fact they were their household’s main source of income while so young.
“Having the child be the breadwinner almost inherently changes the dynamic of a family, and then it becomes, like, how do you discipline that breadwinner?” Lovato said of their mom and stepdad.
“I mean, they’d try to ground me, but I was an egotistical child star, and I thought I was on top of the world. I’d be like, ‘But I pay the bills,’ and what do you say to that?”
Lovato’s experience has made them take a hard stance against children getting involved in the entertainment world at all.
“No child should ever be in the limelight. It’s too much pressure,” they told Spin magazine in a 2022 interview. “There’s an absence of childhood that you never get to experience.”
For “Child Star,” Lovato’s directorial debut, the entertainer enlisted a team of one-time Hollywood kids to talk about their experiences being young celebrities.
Drew Barrymore, Kenan Thompson, Raven-Symoné, Alyson Stoner and JoJo Siwa also appear in the documentary, which comes out Sept. 17.