Lipnicki Was Bullied

Jonathan Lipnicki, the kid actor who played Renee Zellweger’s bespectacled son in Jerry Maguire, is opening up about his experiences being bullied following his quick rise to stardom in 1996. As Lipnicki reflects, middle school and even into high school were brutal years for him, belittled as a result of his movie star turn:

As a kid/teen I was made fun of relentlessly by some people who are now even my friends on FB. I was told I was a has-been and would never book a job again.

Professional booking slams are the worst. Lipnicki recalls specifically one kid in high school called him a “has-been” in Econ class. Gangster’s Paradise was playing in the background. Did this really happen or are you repeating a rehearsed casting room monologue? Lipnicki claims he had panic attacks every night before school wondering how he would face his IMDb credit deriding classmates.

The bullying card is a nuanced play. Taunting and ridicule is an ordinary course of primate socialization. The vast majority of adults remember being bullied during their school days. They probably were. Name an NBA player who’s never taken an elbow to the face. Kids who are naturally weaker or non-conformist or submissive take the brunt of the social caste shoving, but everybody’s somewhere on that scale. The captain of the football team goes home to be beat by his dad and watch his mom secretly drink. Watch John Hughes movies. That wasn’t whole cloth.

Classmates were probably jealous of Lipnicki because he got to hang with Cruise and Zellweger before both went completely nuts. Chicks at school probably pinched his cheeks a ton and blew him if he wore his glasses from the movie and gelled his hair. Lipnicki’s lifelong battle with depression and mental illness are far more likely the result of being a kid actor with shitty stage parents who pressured him to perform.

Nevertheless, claims of being bullied are the most direct route to encouraging and supportive comments on social media. You did three tours of duty in Afghanistan? Crickets. Lipnicki just re-remembered that time somebody told him he couldn’t hold a candle to Haley Joel Osment.