Former Disney Channel star Christy Carlson Romano says she won’t push her daughters into Hollywood, and argues child performers need stronger protections from adult industry pressures.
Christy Carlson Romano is telling her story on her own terms. The Emmy-nominated actress, now 42, has released her debut memoir, “Once Upon a Trainwreck: The Fall and Rise of a Child Star,” and used a wide-ranging interview to draw a hard line against the stage-parent culture that defined so much of early-2000s Hollywood.
In remarks to USA TODAY, Romano described a childhood career that began at age 6, a mother who steered her through New York Broadway auditions and a cross-country move for Disney Channel work, and a grown-up resolve not to repeat that bargain with her own kids.
Romano rose with the early-2000s Disney cohort that included Shia LaBeouf, Hilary Duff, and Raven-Symoné. Fans knew her from “Even Stevens,” “Cadet Kelly,” and “Kim Possible.” Looking back, she said she spent years chasing whatever role came next instead of deciding who she wanted to be.
She put it plainly:
Christy Carlson Romano said:
"Looking back, I was really just trying to fit into whatever opportunity was thrown my way, rather than kind of create my own identity so that opportunities would find me in a different light,"
She also said she skipped the usual star machinery. No stylist. No publicist. Little investment in figuring out her own brand while the machine kept moving.
That drift did not end her career. It redirected it. Starting in 2019, she built vlogs and podcasts, found new income, and reconnected with old fans without waiting for a studio green light.
Romano said:
"I feel like I've managed to actually come out on top in my own way because I've been able to find multiple platforms, whether it's been in podcasting successfully or creating content,"
And she stressed the point that matters to parents watching from outside the business: the work is finally on her schedule, not a casting office’s.
"I've been able to create a whole other path of income for my family and myself, as well as really touch new lives and be able to find old followers.... But it's on my terms."
The memoir, published with Simon & Schuster and described as out now, is not a victory lap. Romano drafts in opposition to what she calls child labor in Hollywood and draws a “fine line between supporting a child's dreams and setting them up for failure.”
She described growing up around “adult environments” that featured sexual humor and nudity backstage, the kind of workplace no ordinary sixth-grader should have to navigate. Her fix is practical, not theatrical: strict regulations, social workers on set, and an individual advocate assigned to every child performer.
Romano said:
"Having advocates around you as a child will help you grow up with a more healthy understanding that you had people there in your corner protecting you as a child,"
The other side of that coin, she warned, is lasting damage.
"I think that trauma compounds when you get older and you look back and say, 'No one was there for me.'"
That is the accountability question Hollywood prefers to dodge. When adults cash checks built on a child’s schedule, someone has to be charged with protecting the child, not the production calendar.
Romano and her husband, Brendan Rooney, are raising two daughters, Isabella and Sofia. She does not pretend the industry door is locked. She refuses to shove it open.
She said she and Rooney “would make really great stage parents,” then rejected the trade-off that role demands:
"My husband and I would make really great stage parents, but it's also a tremendous amount of responsibility to sacrifice your career for your children's career. And it's not for everyone,"
She went further on motive. Stage parents, in her view, often share a “self-sacrificial” profile she will not take on. If her kids want the arts, she wants it to start small, not with a parent marching them into a casting office because the family already knows the shortcuts.
Money changes the room, she added. “Making money from something becomes a very different experience than just enjoying it for the sake of learning about it.” Parents who have watched youth sports turn into full-time pressure campaigns will recognize the pattern. Fame is just a louder version of the same mistake.
Romano is also heading back to a camera this holiday season in the Hallmark Channel film “Holiday Ever After: A Disney World Wish Come True,” her first major role in seven years. She plays Lacey Chabert’s older sister. Much of the story unfolds at Walt Disney World in Orlando, with the pair “running around and riding rides and talking about her boy trouble.”
After a quarter-century tied to the Disney brand, it has been 26 years since her “Even Stevens” debut, she called the job a kind of homecoming. The set, she said, was “really a very joyful place,” a reminder that not every workplace in the business runs on the same rules.
She is not trying to wreck anyone’s nostalgia. She wants the old shows enjoyed with clearer eyes.
Romano said she does not “wish to scare or hurt anybody by talking about the truth,” and she expects mixed reactions, anger from some, sadness from others, while hoping the work itself holds up over time.
Parents owe kids a childhood first, a headshot second, and Hollywood should stop pretending those priorities are the same.
