Feldman’s Hollywood nightmare

Corey Feldman understands the perils of being a child star, said Claire Hoffman in Details. That’s why he’s banned his 9-year-old son from pursuing a career in acting. “No way in hell,” he says. “Not gonna happen. Ever.” By the time he started high school, Feldman had already acted in several Hollywood films, including Stand by Me and Gremlins, but his fame held little sway with his classmates. “That was the irony, right?” he says. “I’m in all these teen magazines. There’s millions of kids sending me fan mail. [But] girls didn’t look at me. I was beaten up at school every day.” Feldman was miserable. “I tried to kill myself almost on a daily basis.’’ In Hollywood, the teen idol was “surrounded by a nest of pedophiles” who molested him and his young co-stars. “That was my reality,” he says. “These were devilish, sick-minded individuals.” Meanwhile, his parents squandered his early fortune, forcing him to legally emancipate himself from them at 15. Unfortunately for Feldman, he can’t quit the industry, and still takes small parts. “Because I never made millions of dollars, I can’t just retire,” he says. “It’s pretty embarrassing to look at people like Tom Hanks—when you run into them at the local bagel shop, and they go, ‘So what are you doing these days?’”

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