Jason Bateman Makes Blunt Confession About His Early Career
What To Know
- Jason Bateman candidly reflected on his early career, admitting he still feels pressure to avoid being seen as a “child-actor failure.”
- He also discouraged children from pursuing acting, citing the psychological challenges and lack of job security compared to traditional careers.
- Despite his struggles and regrets about his younger self, Bateman has achieved lasting success in both television and film as an adult actor.
Jason Bateman recently opened up about his early career — and in the process, he made a blunt confession.
In an interview with Esquire published on Monday, December 8, the actor, 56, admitted, “I still feel like I’m trying to not be a child-actor failure. I’m still trying to make it out.”
He continued, “Starting at the age of 10, I was teaching myself how to be a professional liar. How to convince people that I was something other than what I was thinking inside.”
As a child actor, Bateman starred in Little House on the Prairie as the adopted son, James Cooper Ingalls, also appearing in TV shows like Silver Spoons and The Hogan Family. However, he confessed that he wouldn’t recommend kids going into acting for two reasons.
“Number one, you teach yourself schizophrenia at an age when you should be allowing for all the clues and signals of who you are to come in. You’re trying to figure out who you are at that age, not trying to develop believable other versions of yourself,” he explained.
Bateman continued, “The other thing is you could be spending all those years training for an occupation where you can come out of college credentialed and say, I’ve got a base salary. I’ve got some job security. I feel like I can ask my girlfriend to marry me. I can provide. You don’t have that ever in this business.”
Everett Collection
Bateman also compared himself as a young adult to his daughter, Francesca, 19. (He shares a second daughter, Maple, 13, with his wife, Amanda Anka.)
“My older daughter is just eating up everything about the college experience. The future’s so bright,” he explained. “I remember feeling that when I was 18 too. I just thought there was no one better than me, and there are interviews that I’ve seen that prove that. I can’t stand watching them. It’s so gross.”
He recalled an interview he did with Jane Pauley on Today in 1987, saying that he “had to turn it off” after about 90 seconds “because I was such a douchebag.”
Bateman detailed, “I mean, I had some affected voice, probably because I’m all banged up from the night before. But there’s also such self-satisfaction. I’m talking about how many things I turned down to do Teen Wolf Too, like, ‘Hey guy, no one’s buying that.'”
Ultimately, Bateman went on to lead a successful acting career as an adult, too. He is known for starring as Michael Bluth in Arrested Development from 2003 to 2019. Bateman also starred in films like Juno (2007), Horrible Bosses (2011), Bad Words (2013), and Game Night (2018). Most recently, he reprised his role as Nick Wilde in Zootopia 2.