Justin Cooper, a child star who starred in iconic movies like Liar Liar and Dennis the Menace Strikes Again!, has opened up about his exit from Hollywood. As reported by People, there were a number of reasons as to why he left the scene.
"It was my first time going to public school," he recalled. "I started going through puberty - I was in an awkward stage and I would go on auditions, but I wasn't booking things as often as I used to."
"Then it got to the point where my mom was like, 'Oh, you got an audition today?' And I'd be like, 'Ugh.'" The whole thing had caused him quite a lot of burnout - he just wanted to do other things, especially as a teenager.
"We'd sit in the car for 45, 50 minutes to get out there and then I gotta do this, and then I gotta go home and start my homework, and I just want to go home right now and talk to girls on AIM," he explained.
But it was the Liar Liar star's mom who eventually got him to halt his Hollywood acting career. "After a while of me just being like, 'Ugh'... my mom was like, 'Look, if you don't want to do it anymore, you don't have to do it."
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The 'Liar Liar' Child Star Also Opened Up About His Transition to Public School
The exit from the acting world was not the only change that the Liar Liar star had to navigate. He also transitioned from private to public school in that time.
At private school, he recalled, people didn't really pay much attention to him despite his acting career. But that wasn't exactly the case once he made the leap.
"I was scared s***less going to public school," he revealed. It was also a big change for him. "My whole life, I had a uniform that I had to wear to school... And now it's like I have to decide on clothes and look cool and who am I going to sit with."
"When I got there, frankly, a lot of the girls wanted to talk to me just because they know who I was. There were guys that were like, 'Screw this guy'. Then also, people just automatically assume without talking to you or having any interaction with you, that you're stuck up because you were in a movie."
