Christmas feels most magical through a child’s eyes, which is why the many young faces of beloved holiday films stay with us.
Santa, candy canes and oversized ornaments are the universal Yuletide symbols, but there are also the unforgettable images of Kevin McAllister (Macaulay Culkin) burning his baby face with aftershave or a doe-eyed Ralphie Parker (Peter Billingsley) begrudgingly donning pink bunny pajamas that have become equally essential to Christmas iconography.
Though their roles now play a significant part in many people’s holiday traditions, the conversation surrounding child stardom has shifted in recent years, as more former young actors have spoken out against the serious hardships they faced at such a vulnerable age. As a result, not every one of these actors followed the same trajectory. Some continued to appear on-screen well into their adult careers, some have stepped away from Hollywood altogether and others continue to embrace the role they originated through sequels, conventions, interviews and more.
From now-award winners like Johnny Galecki (National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation) to ex-Hollywood acts such as Taylor Momsen (How the Grinch Stole Christmas), find out where these Christmas movie child stars have sled off to since.
Mara Wilson was only 7 years old when she brought wise-beyond-her-years charm to the 1994 remake of Miracle on 34th Street. She went on to star in Matilda (1996) and A Simple Wish (1997) before stepping away from Hollywood life and earning a degree from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Looking back on her time making Miracle on 34th Street, Wilson told Entertainment Weekly (per Yahoo! Entertainment) that she helped keep the Christmas magic alive on set, even though that wasn’t part of her own faith. “There were so many other kids around, too. I didn’t actually believe in Santa, because I was raised Jewish,” she said, “but if [the other kids] asked me about it, I would be polite and just say, ‘Yes, sure, that’s Santa Claus.’”
Her memoir, Where Am I Now? True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame, hit shelves in 2016. In November 2017, she spoke out against the sexualization of young Hollywood stars in a powerful essay for Elle and, in February 2021, penned an op-ed for The New York Times about her personal experience with this issue.
Since then, she’s lent her voice to the TV series Helluva Boss and Ollie & Scoops, as well as the podcast series VAM PD.
Roles in the beloved holiday classic Uncle Buck (1989) and Richie Rich (1994) helped shape Macaulay Culkin into an iconic ’90s child star. After a nearly decade-long hiatus from acting, he took on roles in Party Monster (2003) and Saved! (2004) “I don’t just turn my back [on the spotlight]; I actively don’t want it,” Culkin told The Guardian of fame in 2016. However, he did reprise his famous Home Alone role for Christmas 2018 for a Google holiday ad.
These days, he keeps busy playing with his band, The Pizza Underground, and hanging with goddaughter Paris Jackson. He also hosts a podcast called Bunny Ears (and uses Twitter (now X) to remind people how old they are). In 2021, Culkin starred in season 10 of American Horror Story.
Culkin received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2023, with his movie mom, Catherine O’Hara, speaking about the project they’ll be tied to forever “Home Alone was, is and always will be a beloved global sensation … the reason families all over the world can’t let a year go by without watching and loving Home Alone together is because of Macaulay Culkin,” she said.
In 2022, Culkin got engaged to fellow child actor Brenda Song of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. Months before their engagement, the couple welcomed their first son, Dakota, in April 2021. They had a second son in 2022.
Murray Close/Sygma/Sygma via Getty; Gilbert Carrasquillo/FilmMagic
The same year he appeared on ER and in Unhook the Stars with Marisa Tomei, then-7-year-old Jake Lloyd starred alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1996’s Jingle All the Way — playing Howard Langston’s son, Jaime, whose one Christmas wish is a Turbo Man action figure. Lloyd then soon landed the role of a young Anakin Skywalker (the future villain Darth Vader) in 1999’s Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace.
By 2001, Lloyd retired from Hollywood due to relentless bullying from classmates over his Star Wars role. His last on-screen appearance was in the hydroplane racing film Madison.
In 2015, the former child star made headlines following allegations of assaulting his mother and an arrest for reckless driving. Lloyd’s family later disclosed in a 2020 statement to Geek News Now that the former child star had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia — a condition that contributed to his psychotic break three years later.
In a March 2024 interview with Scripp News, Lloyd’s mother, Lisa, shared an update, revealing he was 10 months into an 18-month stay at a mental health rehabilitation center. While his diagnosis initially “threw him off into an even worse depression,” Lisa expressed optimism about his recovery, telling the outlet he’s “doing much better than I expected” and is “becoming a little bit more social.”
Peter Billingsley’s portrayal of aspiring BB-gun owner Ralphie — a performance he delivered at 12 years old — was so endearing that it’s now played on TV for 24 hours straight every Christmas.
In December 2020, Billingsley shared on That Scene with Dan Patrick podcast how he had been given real chewing tobacco by the props person on the set of A Christmas Story for the scene where Ralphie daydreams about using the aforementioned BB gun to save his family. “Can you imagine?” he said. “It was a very different time then. He just gave me straight-up, whole-cut leaf Red Man.”
On the lasting impact of the movie, Billingsley added during that same conversation, “To have something that stuck then, and then every decade continues to, there’s obviously a deeper core that it’s hitting.”
He’s stuck with acting over the years but has been more active behind the camera. His résumé includes executive producer credits for The Break-Up (2006), Iron Man (2008) and F Is for Family, and his directorial debut, Couples Retreat (2009). Billingsley also served as a producer on the Broadway musical adaptation of A Christmas Story.
However, the former child star has returned to the big screen with 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home and reprised his Christmas Story role in the HBO Max sequel, A Christmas Story Christmas, in 2022.
Miffy Englefield was only 6 years old when she stole audiences’ hearts as Graham’s (Jude Law) precocious oldest daughter, Sophie, in Nancy Meyers’ cozy holiday rom-com.
After her standout role, she appeared on TV dramas like The Whistleblowers and Casualty but has largely stepped away from Hollywood — though she remains proud of her part in The Holiday‘s enduring legacy.
“To get messages coming up 20 years on, which makes me feel incredibly old, that people look forward to [The Holiday]. It’s like their Christmas tradition, they come home to their family and that’s what they watch,” Englefield told the Daily Mail in December 2023. “It baffles me, it’s absolutely insane and I love it. I love being a little part of people’s Christmas traditions. I think it’s so sweet.”
In April 2020, Englefield welcomed her daughter, Frankie, who is regularly featured on her TikTok. There, the actress shares glimpses of motherhood as well as nostalgic reflections about her time working on The Holiday.
In the holiday comedy classic Elf, Daniel Tay was just 12 when he played Michael Hobbs, Buddy’s (Will Ferrell) skeptical half-brother who eventually warms up to his cheery naïveté, especially after Buddy defends him from bullies via snowball fight.
Following his breakout role, Tay added credits to his résumé with appearances in Beer League (2006) and Brooklyn Rules (2007), and lent his voice to the animated film Doogal (2006) and the video game Grand Theft Auto IV (2009). Shortly after, Tay stepped away from the spotlight.
In 2014, the ex-actor graduated from Yale University with a bachelor’s degree in economics. After spending a few years as an SAT prep tutor, he transitioned into academia as a research fellow at Columbia University and is pursuing a medical degree at Cornell University.
After his big-screen feature debut in Love Actually (2003), the angel-faced actor Thomas Brodie-Sangster has continued to work steadily into adulthood. He’s appeared in Nanny McPhee (2005), Nowhere Boy (2009), The Maze Runner franchise (2014–2018), episodes of Game of Thrones and even had a small part in Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens. In 2017, Brodie-Sangster reprised his Love Actually role for the charity mini-sequel Red Nose Day Actually. He returned to the small screen in 2020 on Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit, FX’s Pistol in 2022 and Hulu’s The Artful Dodger in 2024.
Brodie-Sangster began dating Talulah Riley, his Pistols costar (and twice Elon Musk’s ex-wife), in 2021. After announcing their engagement in July 2023, they wed in June 2024.
In 2000, Taylor Momsen taught us all about the real meaning of Christmas as Cindy Lou Who. Seven years later, she scored the role of ambitious teen Jenny Humphrey on Gossip Girl. Since then, the star has been focusing her energy on her rock band, The Pretty Reckless.
Growing up a child star was not easy for Momsen, telling former Gossip Girl costar Penn Badgley on the Podcrushed podcast in September 2023 that she was “made fun of relentlessly.”
“Every time I would start a new school or go somewhere else, I don’t even think the kids knew my name. I was just ‘Grinch girl,’ ” Momsen added. “Not even the character name [Cindy Lou Who], just Grinch girl. I got used to it, but it was alienating.”
Johnny Galecki joined the Chevy Chase-led Vacation series as son Rusty Griswold in 1989. He became a permanent cast member on Roseanne in 1992 and returned in 2017 as David Healy on the short-lived ABC revival before its cancellation following Roseanne Barr’s racist tweet. However, Galecki joined the Roseanne spinoff, The Conners, in 2018 as a recurring character for a handful of episodes.
After wrapping his 12-season run as Leonard Hofstadter on The Big Bang Theory in 2019, the actor has been working on producing a Christmas Vacation spinoff series titled The Griswolds for HBO Max, though no release date has been set yet.
Galecki told Rolling Stone in 2020 about a regret he had then about a choice he had made on the Christmas Vacation set as a 14-year-old actor. When he was approached to shoot a father-son scene that wasn’t originally in the script with costar Chevy Chase, Galecki said no.
“So they asked what I thought and I said, ‘I don’t think there’s any point. Somebody thought it was worth taking out at some point, so even if we shoot it, it’ll probably get taken out again.’ I literally talked myself out of what could have been a classic scene with Chevy Chase,” he shared. “Now that I’m a jaded Hollywood f—, I realize the error of my ways. I still kick myself in the a– for this everyday.”
Galecki welcomed a son, Avery, with then-girlfriend Alaina Meyer in 2019. The actor shared in Architectural Digest‘s March 2024 issue that he and his wife, Morgan, quietly married and welcomed a daughter, Oona Evelena.
20th Century Studios; Amy Graves/WireImage
At just 9 years old, Savannah Stehlin landed her first feature film role in The Family Stone as Elizabeth Trousdale — the child of the eldest daughter in the Stone clan — sharing the screen with an all-star cast of Diane Keaton, Craig T. Nelson, Dermot Mulroney, Rachel McAdams, Sarah Jessica Parker and more.
The actress then transitioned to TV, with guest appearances on Gilmore Girls, Sleeper Cell, ER, Hannah Montana, According to Jim and Without a Trace, among other series. In 2011, Stehlin returned to the silver screen, starring in the titular role of Spork (2011), followed by performances in The Axe Murders of Villisca (2016) and Low Low (2019).
In The Santa Clause trilogy, Eric Lloyd starred alongside Tim Allen as Charlie, the son of a divorced dad who becomes the actual St. Nick. He continued acting in the eight-year gap between the first and second films in the series before enrolling at Chapman University to study film production. Lloyd now plays in a band, runs a production studio and occasionally acts.
“It’s funny that people still recognize me,” he shared in a 2014 Reddit AMA. “I don’t think I look the same. But people will come from across the room and say, ‘OH MY GOD, CHARLIE!’ ”
The actor rejoined Allen and the original Santa Clause cast in 2022 on the Disney+ series The Santa Clauses for an episode in its first season.
Karolyn Grimes was merely 6 years old when she warmed hearts as Zuzu Bailey in 1946’s It’s a Wonderful Life. She only acted until the early 1950s — starring in another holiday film, The Bishop’s Wife (1947) — but the classic Christmas movie remains an important part of her life.
Grimes still travels to speak at film screenings during the holiday season, and in 2000, she published Zuzu Bailey’s It’s a Wonderful Life Cookbook. After 68 years, Grimes returned to the screen in 2020 as a talk-show guest in Canaan Land. In 2023, the actress revisited her famous line “Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings,” lending her voice to Anders Knudsen’s Christmas single, “A Day in the Life of a Christmas Tree.”
Grimes is a mother of four — with two children from her first marriage to Hal Barnes and two more with her second husband, Mike Wilkerson, who died in 1993.
Tracy Bennett/Dimension/Kobal/Shutterstock; Jamie McCarthy/Getty
Brett Kelly was around 10 years old when he starred in Bad Santa as Thurman Merman — the sweet, clueless kid who believes that a boozy department store Santa (Billy Bob Thornton) is the real deal.
Following his breakout role, the Canadian actor kept busy with movie gigs in The Sandlot 2 (2005), Unaccompanied Minors (2006) and Trick ‘r Treat (2009) before reprising Thurman in the 2016 sequel Bad Santa 2.
As of 2021, Kelly has been a recurring cast member in the Canadian legal drama Family Law. He also competed in an October 2024 episode of Jeopardy!, finishing in third place.
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