Amy's Robot

Therapists, remember this name: Cameron Bright

Two great movies are out in theaters now, and both feature 13 year-old Canadian actor Cameron Bright in memorable roles. He does a really good job in both movies, but personally, I'm going to remember Cameron as the child actor most likely to need therapy once he reaches adulthood.

In Thank You for Smoking, he plays Joey, son of tobacco lobbyist Nick Naylor. Joey adores his universally loathed father, and through the course of the movie he pretty much exists to be manipulated by the adults in his life. He's fought over by his divorced parents, taught to use flexible morality by his dad, singled out to represent American childhood during a Senate hearing, and has a shotgun pointed at him by Sam Elliott.

And I'm not even sure where to begin with what happens to this kid in Running Scared, one of the most relentless and ruthlessly violent movies I've ever seen. Let's just say that poor Cameron's character Oleg gets assaulted and nearly killed by a lot of different adults in an impressive variety of horrible ways, including getting shot at, abducted, suffocated, beaten, and molested. Aside from what happens to him personally, he also witnesses incredibly awful and traumatic things pretty much non-stop for the whole movie.

And let's not forget that Cameron's first big role was in 2004's Birth, in which he had to do that weird naked bathtub scene with Nicole Kidman. Which might not seem so bad, really, but the kid was only 10.

So now he's going to be in X-Men:The Last Stand in which he plays Leech, a hairless young mutant. I'm personally hoping the poor guy makes it through this movie without getting flayed or gang raped, but we'll see.

Since Sarah Polley let the world know how traumatic the production of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen was for her at age 9 (and that was a children's movie) I think it's safe to say that even very responsible and sensitive directors don't always know the impact of traumatic subject matter on child actors. So if you're a counselor looking for some future business, you might want to keep your eye on the talented Cameron Bright. Who one of these days might get to be in a nice wholesome Dakota Fanning movie.

categories: Celebrities, Movies
posted by amy at 11:23 AM | #