Celebrities you forgot were child stars

While Batman, American Psycho and The Fighter star Christian Bale is now most known for his transformative physical work, he actually first got his start in acting as a 12-year-old with his nuanced emotive skills. He made his debut in a TV adaptation of Anastasia in 1986, and earned acclaim and a National Board of Review award for Steven Spielberg's prestige 1987 war drama Empire of the Sun.

The daughter of Oscar nominee Eric Roberts and niece of Oscar winner Julia Roberts, Emma Roberts made a minor appearance as a nine-year-old in the 2001 drama Blow, carrying on the family legacy. However, her breakout came three years later, when she was cast as Addie Singer in the Nickelodeon sitcom Unfabulous, making her a teen idol.

Kurt Russell has been a movie mainstay for decades, the face of many-a John Carpenter and Quentin Tarantino classic, but his acting career began when he was just 12 years old as the face of the Western series The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters in 1963. As a teenager, he then began appearing in several Walt Disney productions before breaking into the mainstream in the '80s.

Anna Paquin may best be known for playing Rogue in the X-Men franchise, or her Golden Globe-winning Sookie Stackhouse in True Blood, but her film debut actually came in 1993's The Piano. What's more, at the age of just 11, her performance won her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, the second youngest competitive Oscar winner in history (only surpassed by 10-year-old Tatum O'Neal).

Yes, Raven-Symoné was technically still a teenager when she was cast in the groundbreaking Disney Channel sitcom That's So Raven in the early aughts, but by that point, she'd been acting for over a decade. At just three years old in 1989, she was cast as Olivia Kendall on The Cosby Show after first auditioning for a different Bill Cosby project. From 1993-97, she also played Nicole Lee in the sitcom Hangin' With Mr. Cooper.

Elvis star Austin Butler got his own start as a teen with Emma on Unfabulous as an extra, plus other Nick shows like Drake & Josh and Disney's Hannah Montana, and a regular background role in Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, before being cast at 17 in Nick's Zoey 101, playing Jamie Lynn Spears' titular character's love interest, James Garrett.

Natalie Portman's start in Hollywood came at 12 playing Mathilda, the reluctant sidekick of a hitman in the French thriller Léon: The Professional. The film earned critical acclaim, although has since attracted controversy for its sexualization of its pre-teen star, plus the relationship between her character and the adult Léon. She did make her Broadway debut at 16 in a production of The Diary of Anne Frank before being cast in the Star Wars prequel films as Padmé Amidala.

Regina King is best known for roles in films like Friday (1995) and 2018's If Beale Street Could Talk, which won her an Oscar. But she actually first broke into the mainstream in 1985 at the age of 14 playing boy-crazy Brenda Jenkins on the sitcom 227, a role she inhabited until its end in 1990.

While Drake, aka Champagne Papi, aka Drizzy, is now the face of many hits (and many rap beefs), even diehard fans often forget that the rapper got his start on the hit Canadian teen drama Degrassi: The Next Generation playing Jimmy Brooks, who spends a majority of his run on the show in a wheelchair. Drake was cast at just 15 in 2001, a role he played until 2008 while independently kicking off a music career.

Years before Kristen Stewart earned both fans and haters as Bella Swan in the Twilight franchise, she made her acting debut with films in The Thirteenth Year (1999) and The Flintstones in Viva Las Vegas (2000), starting at the age of nine. However, she first earned notice in 2002 at the age of 12 in Panic Room opposite fellow former child star Jodie Foster.