Child Actors Who Shared The Screen With Their Parents

Hollywood is full of acting families. Sometimes it's a group of siblings like the Hemsworth clan. Others are one or more parents and a child, like Janet Leigh, Tony Curtis, and their daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis. Even rarer occurrences give us groups like the Skarsgård family, where seemingly every new movie has at least one of them in it.

Of those acting families that have a parent and a child hitting movie screens during the same time period, you don't often see them appearing on screen together. Today, we're looking at those times when a child actor has showed up in a film with one of their parents. Of course, plenty of people can say, "I showed up on set one day and was in a movie with my famous mom!" But let's talk about child actors who went on to find more success in their own right, some even eclipsing their parents in the grand scheme of things.

Eva Amurri has not appeared in any film or television since 2016, but she had a pretty strong run going in the late '90s and early 2000s. The actress' parents are a true Hollywood power couple — her father is director Franco Amurri, and her mother is superstar actress Susan Sarandon. Well, "power couple" might be stretching it a bit... Franco Amurri did direct Monkey Trouble, after all.

Amurri has actually appeared on screen several times with her mother. One of her first roles was actually playing the nine-year-old version of Sarandon's character, Helen, in Dead Man Walking. She also appeared as the daughter of Sarandon's character, Livinia Kingsley, in The Banger Sisters, and she and Sarandon both made guest appearances on the same episode of Friends.

Amurri never quite reached the same level of stardom as her mother, but she has made several memorable appearances on television, including a sizable recurring role on Californication. Her biggest movie role was probably her 2004 appearance in Saved!

Though he only has a few credits to his name, John David Washington has quickly become one of the most in-demand actors in Hollywood. His breakout performance came in Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman, which brought him a lot of awards attention. He also plays the lead in Christopher Nolan's Tenet, appearing alongside a veritable who's who of successful actors.

If you couldn't piece it together, John David Washington's dad is the wildly successful Denzel Washington. John David's first role came when he was only eight years old, appearing as a student on screen with his dear old dad in Malcolm X. It's a small role, and it would be several years before John David started appearing in larger roles. However, it served as a nice hint of things to come. He also served as a producer on another of his dad's films, The Book of Eli. However, he didn't actually appear as an actor.

The daughter of one of Hollywood's longest running power couples, Sosie Bacon's parents are Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick. She has appeared with each of them a few different times, and her first role was actually in the film Loverboy, which starred both of them. The story features several flashbacks to Sedgwick's character's childhood, with Sosie playing the character at age ten. She would go on to appear in a few different episodes of The Closer, her mom's long-running TNT series.

Outside of appearing with her parents, Sosie has had several different television roles. She played recurring characters on Scream: The TV Series, Here and Now, and 13 Reasons Why. She has also started finding more work in film, recently appearing in Charlie Says and The Last Summer. It's probably a safe bet that she gets the ultimate trump card when people play "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon."

Rumer Willis was born in 1988 to Hollywood couple Demi Moore and Bruce Willis. She has gone on to a successful acting career in her own right, but many of her first film appearances were with her parents. She made her debut in 1995's Now and Then, playing the sister of the childhood version of her mom's character. The next year, she appeared in Striptease, again alongside her mother (this time playing her daughter). Her next roles were in The Whole Nine Yards and Hostage, both of which starred her father.

Since then, Rumer has appeared in several films and television shows, and has showcased that she has some impressive acting chops. She had recurring roles on both the 2009 version of 90210 and on Empire, and she has acted in films like Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, The House Bunny, and Wild Cherry. Probably the highlight of her career, however, was nearly making it to the finale of The Masked Singer's first season. She was the highest placing non-musician!

You might know Jaden Smith more as the Twitter-goer who capitalizes the first letter of every word when he tweets: "Someone Just Told Me 'I Look Soo Much Hotter In Real Life' I Don't Know If Thats A Compliment." Jaden has stretched into a lot of different areas of pop culture and entertainment, but he still maintains a pretty successful acting career. That's certainly no surprise, considering his parents: Will and Jada Pinkett Smith.

Jaden has appeared with Will several different times on film. In fact, you could even say Jaden's first appearance was before he was even born, when a pregnant Jada appeared the music video for Will's hit "Just the Two of Us."  His real debut alongside his dad would come in 2006 with The Pursuit of Happyness, a role where Jaden practically stole the show from one of Hollywood's most bankable stars. A few years later, Jaden and Will also starred together in M. Night Shyamalan's After Earth.

Jaden Smith continues to appear in movies and music videos, and he also plays a major role in the Netflix animated series Neo Yokio.

One of Hollywood's most bankable stars, Angelina Jolie continues to churn out successful films year after year. She is the daughter of another major Hollywood star (who continues to make films), Jon Voight. Despite the fact that Voight has nearly 100 roles to his credit and Jolie has over 50, they have only appeared alongside each other in a movie twice.

Jolie's first credited role came when she was only seven years old, appearing in a small part in Lookin' to Get Out. That film starred Jon Voight as Alex Kovac. It would be nearly 20 years before Jolie and Voight would share the screen again in 2001's Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. By then, Jolie's star had started burning very brightly indeed, and she continues to find massive success. With ongoing roles for the likes of Marvel and Disney in projects like Eternals and the Maleficent movies, it seems likely she'll continue her run of blockbusters for the foreseeable future.

Maude Apatow has a pretty recognizable last name, so it should come as no surprise that her dad is writer/director Judd Apatow. She has appeared in three of her father's films, and her mother, actress Leslie Mann, shared the screen with her in all of them.

Maude and Leslie's first appearance together came when Maude was just ten years old, in 2007's Knocked Up. The two went on to share the screen in two other Apatow films: 2009's Funny People and 2012's This is 40. According to IMDb, Maude is also reportedly appearing in an as-of-now untitled 2020 film from Apatow, though we don't know yet if Mann is attached to that film. Outside of working with her parents, Maude has found success in a few other television shows and films. She had a small spot as Cleo in a few episodes of Girls, and she also played a lead role on HBO's Euphoria.

Dakota Johnson is probably best known today for playing the lead role of Anastasia Steele in the film adaptations of your drunk aunt's favorite books, the Fifty Shades series. Outside of those films, she's made plenty of others, and her first credited appearance came when she was only ten years old in the movie Crazy in Alabama.

Dakota played one of the daughters of Melanie Griffith's character Lucille in that film — fitting, as she's Griffith's real life daughter. After appearing in Crazy in Alabama, Johnson took over a decade off from acting to finish school. She has obviously returned to acting since, scoring several major roles besides the Fifty Shades series.

Dakota Johnson has more than one famous parent. Her father is actually Hollywood legend Don Johnson, though the two have not appeared on screen together. In an interview with The Guardian while promoting his 2019 appearance in Knives Out, Don heaped praise on his daughter, saying this of Dakota: "She's a wonderful actress, and in some ways better than her mother and me."

Though she's known more as a stage performer than a film actress, Liza Minelli's star power was enough to carry her over to some pretty impressive roles on the screen. Before she stole every scene she was in as Lucille Austero on Arrested Development, she also crushed it in movies like Cabaret and New York, New York. Minelli's mother, Judy Garland, was one of the golden age Hollywood stars, and the two appeared together on screen when Minelli was just three years old.

Though she was uncredited, Minelli appeared in the film In the Good Old Summertime in 1949. Garland was the star of the movie and, though it never rose to the success of many of her other iconic films (Wizard of Oz, A Star is Born), it still marks the only film collaboration between the two. Maybe they would have appeared in more films together if Garland had not passed away at only 47 years old.

Laura Dern has received numerous award nominations and has been part of many successful film franchises, including Star Wars and Jurassic Park. Her parents are two very successful actors as well: Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd. Though they initially discouraged her from a career in acting, Dern has appeared on screen several times with her mother.

Dern's first two roles were small parts in films with her mother: White Lightning and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, appearing in both of these films before she reached the age of ten. Dern and her mother have appeared in a grand total of nine films together, including Wild at Heart, Rambling Rose, The Siege at Ruby Ridge, Citizen Ruth, Daddy and Them, Damaged Care, and Inland Empire. In fact, the two made history for Rambling Rose as the first mother/daughter pair to receive Oscar nominations for the same film.

In 2010, Laura Dern got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. That same day, both her mother and father did as well.

Despite the fact that they act under different last names, Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez are brothers. Both have had successful acting careers, and so has their father, Martin Sheen. Both Charlie and Emilio have appeared with their dad in several films, and they've appeared with each other a few times, too. However, the trio have only ever appeared in one film together: 1973's Badlands.

Charlie was just eight years old in Badlands, and Emilio was 11. They were both uncredited, and appear for only a moment, but it apparently gave them both the acting bug. They later appeared together in six other films. Meanwhile, Emilio and his dad shared the screen five more times, while Charlie and Martin did a whopping nine other films together.

All three continue to act, although both Charlie Sheen and his brother have slowed down quite a bit. Their dad, meanwhile, continues to put out movies at a pretty impressive clip.

This one's a bit of an odd one. Yes, Billy Ray Cyrus was a star long before his daughter, Miley, was even born. That said, there is no doubt that Miley Cyrus took over the family crown before sharing the screen with her dad. The two appeared together across several different iterations of the Hannah Montana franchise, with Miley starring and Billy Ray making several appearances as Robby Ray.

Neither Miley nor Billy Ray do a ton of acting anymore — they've both essentially returned to the world of music. They still occasionally get lured into the world of film and television, however. Miley appeared in a 2018 episode of Black Mirror, and Billy Ray pops up in things from time to time. He even starred in Still the King, a TV show about a washed up country singer, before reentering the public consciousness with Lil Nas X on the remix for "Old Town Road."

For a certain generation, Hannah Montana was the biggest thing around, and this father-daughter duo made it happen.

Tatum O'Neal made history in 1973, when she became the youngest person (age ten) to ever win a competitive Oscar. She won Best Supporting Actress for her role as Addie in Paper Moon. O'Neal later went on to become tabloid fodder for years — a volatile marriage with tennis superstar John McEnroe started it, and a controversial tell-all book about her relationship with her father, actor Ryan O'Neal, added fuel to the fire in 2004.

Tatum and Ryan starred together in Paper Moon and, according to her book, Ryan was jealous of his daughter's success. She claims that he punched her when he found out she was nominated for an Academy Award, and that he continued to work with his drug dealer even after she had told him that the man had sexually assaulted her. Ryan O'Neal rejected the claims made in the book.

Besides Paper Moon, Tatum O'Neal appeared with her dad in two other films: Nickelodeon and Circle of Two. She continues to act, appearing in one or two movies a year.

Bridget Fonda retired from acting in the early 2000s, but she had a pretty good run of about two decades. Her family is full of successful actors: her grandfather is Henry Fonda, her aunt is Jane Fonda, and her father is Peter Fonda. Bridget was born in 1964, and she appeared at the age of five in one of the most culturally impactful movies of the 1960s. That film was Easy Rider, and it's the only movie she ever appeared in alongside her dad. Easy Rider is hailed as one of the pillars of the counterculture movement, making Peter one of its icons.

As Bridget was so young in that film, she didn't start acting professionally until about fifteen years later, well into the 1980s. She was nominated for both Golden Globes and Emmy Awards, before making her final on-screen appearances to date in 2002. Shortly after she retired, she married musician Danny Elfman, and the two have been together ever since.

The daughter of Robin Williams, Zelda Williams actually got to appear a few different times with her father before his death in 2014. She has continued working in television and film, both in live action and animated features. She's also dipped into the world of directing.

Zelda's first on screen appearance came in 1994, when she appeared in the TV movie In Search of Dr. Seuss, a star-studded tribute that also featured her dad. The next year, at the age of six, she had a small role alongside her father again in the film Nine Months. With Robin once more by her side, she had her first sizable role in 2004's House of D. Finally, she and her father appeared together in a commercial for the 2011 Nintendo DS remake of the classic The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time; Robin had actually named his daughter after the video game princess.

Zelda has provided several voices for animated shows like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Legend of Korra, and has also had plenty of live action roles.

If you can't tell from looking at her picture, Mamie Gummer is the daughter of living legend Meryl Streep. She has appeared in a huge number of successful TV shows, including True Detective and The Good Wife, and she has appeared with her mom in three different films.

Mamie Gummer was only three years old when she debuted on screen in the movie Heartburn, which starred Streep. However, she was credited as "Natalie Stern," most likely so she wouldn't start getting chased by the paparazzi as a toddler. It was a long time before Gummer started acting professionally, but she made a few more appearances with her mother over the years. They later worked together in the movies Evening and Ricki and the Flash.

Just like her mom, Mamie is a successful stage actor as well as working in movies and television. Considering the fact that Streep still stars in several movies every year, it seems likely that the two may wind up crossing paths again in the near future on screen.