Child Actors who disappear

I was thinking about how so many child actors leave the profession as soon as they reach adulthood, some even quit acting before then. I remember posting about Grange Hill about 2 months ago and of course, so many Grange Hill pupil actors don't continue in the profession after leaving and I think there were also quite a few from Byker Grove who didn't continue.

I was reading about Supergran recently and the child actors from the series also disappeared. In fact, IMDB shows the actors who played Supergran's grandson and Inventor Black's granddaughter didn't have any more roles after, and this was both sets of child actors as they were recast in the second series for age reasons, I read this recently on the British Newspaper Archive. It makes me wonder why they all left acting after only being in one TV series.

I also saw that the recast actors in Supergran series 2 looked really different to the originals, especially Supergran's grandson Willie, although the recast Tub actor looked more like the original and both also left acting completely.

Whatever happened to Kathy Pitkin, aka Fizz from Eldorado? Not quite a child actor at launch but close enough.

William Puttock who played Tom in The Upper Hand opted not to continue his acting career once the series finished (unlike his opposite number Kellie Bright who is better known as Linda Carter in EastEnders).

Puttock apparently went on to be a car salesman.

It's probably safe to assume most child actors get into acting as a hobby/after school activity, then get a professional role in a TV production somewhere and find out the copious time it takes to actually do this job isn't the whole "your name in lights and stardom" thing it looks likes - it doesn't result in a good work/life balance at a young age - you're stuck either in a studio or a tutor session somewhere, you don't see much of any "normal life" or your own friends or anything, since you have to dedicate so much time to learning your lines, rehearsal, studying, performing (within limits of the law), going home and going to bed. Can be quite intensive.

Of course the quality of the project you work on tends to matter too, if you're stuck on some crappy "sitcom" show where you know as a ten year old you can write something better than this, its worse for you. If you're on a film or longer production or something a step up from a sitcom, it may be a more bearable experience, and may be seen to a wider audience. The crappy sitcom might get aired on its home network once and then never be seen again anywhere ever.

Eldorado was great fun! I don't think much has been heard of Kathy Pitkin since - it would be great to know what she was up to after the show.

I like to imagine the character of Fiz in Coronation Street who appeared a few years later is the same person who reinvented herself and never spoke of her spanish exploits again.

Victoria Shalet who played Harmony in The Queen's Nose became a psychotherapist.

After she popped up in Jonathan Creek if I remember correctly!

Great post, twolf,.and love your future vision of Fizz!

I loved Eldorado too and I'll never forgive Mr Yentob for ditching it. It was brilliant at the end.

There were many things wrong with Eldorado, but it's perhaps not a good idea to base your entire first episode around the amazing reveal of Fizz, when she was already on the cover of all the TV guides and had been in all the publicity.

in the breathless pre-publicity Kathy Pitkin was billed as ‘the next/new Catherine Zeta-Jones’...who was obvs the break-out star of The Darling Buds of May at the time.

Quite a poor prediction, although- ironically- CZJ’s love life did reflect Fiz’s a few years later

Abigail Rokison is another child actor who didn't stay in the industry. She played Primrose Larkin in The Darling Buds of May between 1991 and 1993. She was a tutor at Cambridge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abigail_Rokison

Joanne Ridley who played the girl in 80s sitcom Me and My Girl left acting. Oddly enough the first result in Google I get for her name is a thread from this site so I'll just post a link to that:
https://tvforum.uk/forums/post1073429#post-1073429