These pint-sized performers were undeniably
cute and precocious, as child stars tend to be. But they've grown up to become unrecognizably
gorgeous, transforming into action stars, musicians, and everything in between. Jonathan Lipnicki Jonathan Lipnicki rose to fame as the adorable
bespectacled kid in 1996's Jerry Maguire. "Are you a football player?" "Am I a football player? I'm a school teacher about to whoop your ass,
put Jerry Maguire on the phone." He also appeared in Like Mike and the Stuart
Little movies, but he struggled with his stardom during his teen years. Though he's consistently landed roles since
his child acting days, being a famous kid was rough for the young star. As he revealed on Instagram, "As a kid/teen, I was made fun of relentlessly
by some people. I was told I was a has-been and would never
book a job again. I was made to feel like garbage every day
of middle school to the point where I had a panic attack every night before school,
because I wondered how I would get through the next day." Fortunately, Lipnicki has put his self-doubt
behind him, and his brand new confident exterior is unrecognizable from the adorable kid he
used to be. Not only is he still acting, but he's also
managed to become a brown belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and has some major muscles to show
off from his hard work. And yes, he finally graduated from braces! Josh Peck Josh Peck will probably always be known as
a Nickelodeon star. Part of the reason his beloved sitcom Drake
& Josh worked so well was because Peck was the polar opposite of his co-star Drake Bell. While Bell played a smooth-talking, ultra-attractive
ladies man, Peck was the chubby, nerdy brother. But oh, how the tables have turned. Since the early days of Drake & Josh, Peck
has lost about 110 pounds, while Bell has navigated bankruptcy and DUI charges. In a 2008 interview with Parade, Peck admitted, "I always had a weight issue since I was a
young kid. I just realized that I was not really happy,
and I decided to become healthy. Hopefully, I will be able to keep it off." "The dream is to whip off my shirt and have
like, a 4 pack. A 2 pack, even. Even a dad bod." These days, Peck is less of a nerdy sidekick
and more of an actual star. His YouTube channel has more than 3 million
subscribers, and he's racked up plenty of credits in TV shows and indie films. He's also come a long way from chasing Mindy
Crenshaw on TV, as he's grown up and gotten himself a wife and a kid. Matthew Lewis Long live Neville Longbottom, the Harry Potter
underdog who taught us that you don't always need to be brave to be a hero. Matthew Lewis started playing the nerdy Gryffindor
when he was just 11 years old. By the second film in the series, he was already
fighting with puberty to keep his childish looks. It didn't work, and his intimate, years-long
relationship with a fat suit began. As he revealed to The AV Club, he lost weight
and thought his part might be recast. Instead, he kept the role and had to deal
with the fat suit, false teeth, and false ears. "He lost the fat suit. The fat suit went. We figured that he'd been living underground,
so he's not eating too well." Lewis was eventually able to reveal his slim
figure in public. He looked almost nothing like his former self,
but everyone has to grow up and graduate from Hogwarts eventually. His transformation was so astounding that
Buzzfeed coined the term "Neville Longbottoming" to describe when puberty gives someone a major
glow-up. The unlikely Harry Potter hero has gone on
to strut his stuff in shirtless magazine spreads that show off his six pack. We never thought we'd see Neville in his underpants,
but here we are. Daveigh Chase Most people who saw 2002's The Ring have the
footage from the creepy VHS tape permanently burned into their brains. The image of Samara crawling out of the TV
is still absolutely terrifying more than a decade later, but as it turns out, Samara
actually isn't all that scary in real life. Instead, she's all grown up and totally gorgeous. Before The Ring, Daveigh Chase had some minor
TV parts and provided the voice of Lilo in Lilo & Stitch. After playing the creepy undead tween, she
ditched the long black locks and starred on HBO's Big Love. She's still acting and she's also perfected
the art of the Instagram model shot. In 2017, she had a brush with the tabloids
when she was arrested after allegedly dumping a dying man outside of a hospital. According to TMZ, she wasn't a suspect and
was merely trying to help the man, who died of a possible overdose, but she did have an
outstanding warrant at the time. She was arrested again in 2018 for misdemeanor
possession of a controlled substance. Abigail Breslin Most audiences first saw Abigail Breslin as
the unlikely beauty queen in Little Miss Sunshine. Olive Hoover was an icon of self-love in oversized
glasses and sweatbands. As it turns out, the actress isn't too far
off from her character in real life as an adult. She's still smashing Hollywood's beauty norms,
and has spoken out publicly about the subject. In 2015, after some people posted negative
comments about photos of Selena Gomez, Breslin responded with a Tumblr post. She declared, "How are young girls supposed to grow up normally
and not feel bad about themselves and not develop eating disorders if it's literally
national headline news that a THIN girl may or may not have put on a few pounds, and YET
still remains THIN?" Breslin doesn't just spend her days smashing
the patriarchy and defying beauty norms. She's still acting, including a high-profile
series regular role on the horror-comedy show Scream Queens. She also released a biting breakup song called
"You Suck" in 2014 that sent 5 Seconds of Summer fans into a frenzy, as the inspiration
for the song was reportedly that band's lead guitarist Michael Clifford. Alyson Stoner Before Sia enlisted Maddie Ziegler to play
a miniature version of herself, Alyson Stoner was the original music video dancing tween. She first rose to fame in multiple Missy Elliot
clips, including "Work It" and "I'm Really Hot." That success led to roles in flicks like Cheaper
by the Dozen and the Step Up series, but growing up in the spotlight wasn't easy for her. As she told Romper in 2019, "The machine is not really designed for overall
human health. You know, it chews us up and spits out, and
we stay because we hope to raise and inspire other people and create impactful material. But ultimately the chaos and the daily fear
of being unemployed over and over again, and the highs and lows, and the volatility of
it all is not for the faint of heart." Perhaps as a result of that experience, Stoner
ended up firing her TV and film team to focus on her music career. As an adult, she looks almost nothing like
the pig-tailed little girl she used to be, and in 2018, she revealed another big transformation. In a Teen Vogue op-ed that detailed her difficulty
with coming to terms with her own orientation, she revealed, "I, Alyson, am attracted to men, women, and
people who identify in other ways. I can love people of every gender identity
and expression." Nicholas Hoult Nicholas Hoult has come a long way since starring
alongside Hugh Grant in 2002's About A Boy. He's not just a boy anymore, though his cobalt
blue eyes are the one thing that's never changed. He looks almost nothing like his childhood
self, and appropriately enough, he's gone on to embark on his most important role yet:
fatherhood. In January 2019, he told the Evening Standard, "Having a baby puts you in this place where
you go, oh, okay, this human is going to change a lot. It makes you value time differently, which
is why I talk very quickly in interviews now, because I need to get home to them." Hoult's priorities have obviously changed
in adulthood. Beyond being a father, he's also transformed
into a full-fledged movie star. After a recurring role in the British teen
drama Skins, he was initiated into the X-Men universe as the big blue Beast. On top of killing it at the box office, his
2018 period drama The Favourite was nominated for ten Oscars. Blake McIver Ewing If you saw Blake McIver Ewing today, you'd
think he was probably a male model. Little would most of us know that he once
starred as a nerdy, but totally adorable, little rascal in the '90s. Specifically, he played bespectacled troublemaker
Waldo in 1994's The Little Rascals. He had a bit of a reputation as a childhood
antagonist, as he also played Michelle's rival Derek on Full House. "Do people still come up to you wanting to
sing 'Yankee Doodle Dandy'?" "Constantly. Constantly." Though child stardom is notoriously difficult
and many former kid actors burn out in a string of DUIs and drug arrests, Ewing doesn't regret
a single bit of his past life. As he told Lavender in 2014, "I was one of those lucky ones—I wanted
to do it, I wasn’t pushed into it. I had parents in the industry who didn’t
want me to do it, but I pushed and pushed. It afforded me a journey that I wouldn’t
trade for anything." Ewing has since focused his efforts on music,
though it took him years to release an album. He picked up go-go dancing to fund his career
rather than crowdsource his music via Kickstarter, which he described as "empowering" because
he realized he was, quote "comfortable in his own body." It sure doesn't hurt when you've got a six
pack. Cole Sprouse Cole Sprouse's glow-up is a thing of infamy. It's not very often a star goes from bowl
cut to Met Gala in a few short years. He and his twin brother Dylan were like the
male version of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen in the early 2000's. They rose to stardom on Disney's The Suite
Life of Zack and Cody, where they hit every awkward puberty mark, punctuated by their
unforgivable bowl cuts and Disney wardrobe. After their run with the Mouse House ended,
the Sprouses went from The Suite Life to the dorm life. Cole told Women's Wear Daily in 2017, "The goal for me to go to college, and my
brother as well, was to fade out. It's no new narrative to say that when people
get out of child stardom, they often times rebel in very serious ways. I didn't want to make that public spectacle. So part of the reason I went to college was
that I wanted to fade out peacefully." But it seems that Cole's plan to avoid fame
seems to have reversed itself, as he's completely reinvented himself as a sex symbol on Riverdale,
The CW's gritty Archie Comics adapation. The series marked his first role in five years,
and yes, he finally cut his hair. Isabelle Fuhrman Isabelle Fuhrman pulled off a feat most child
stars don't ever accomplish. She jumped into the psyche of a 33-year-old
adult who was posing as a child, when she was just a child herself. Discovering that her character Esther was
a full-fledged adult in Orphan will forever go down as one of the most iconic horror movie
moments of the 2000's. But it was challenging for the then 10-year-old
star to understand some of the film's adult themes. As she told The 405 in 2018, "Everyone was conscious of the fact that I
was a kid and didn't want me to grow up too fast. But I had to understand what it was like to
be [...] rejected; I had to understand what it was like to want love so badly that you
would do something like that: 10 year-olds just don't think about those sorts of things." "I am eating normal." "Yeah from Transylvania or wherever you're
from." "Incidentally Transylvania isn't even a country. It's a part of Romania." In the years since that defining role, Fuhrman
has, of course, became an actual adult herself. She's since landed roles in films like the
Stephen King adaptation Cell and the supernatural horror Down a Dark Hall. She doesn't look anything like the pig-tailed
nightmare she played as a young kid, but she's every bit as fierce. Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Nicki Swift videos about your
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