With a pair of posts on his Instagram, actor Jonathan Lipnicki has opened up about the anxiety he experienced as a kid after his early fame from 1996’s Jerry Maguire, saying that he was “made fun of relentlessly” when he was young, with people repeatedly telling him that he’d “never book a job again” and one guy in high school calling him a “has-been” in front of an entire class. He says it was “humiliating” and that it made him “feel like garbage every day” to the point where he’d have panic attacks at night because he didn’t know how he’d be able to get through the bullying the next day.
He didn’t share his story to get sympathy, though. He wanted to show other kids that it’s possible to face vicious bullying and still come out on the other side, noting that “it’s amazing how mean people peak in their teens” and that it can be empowering to come through something like that and still “chase your dreams.”
Lipnicki also touched on his life as a child star and his desire to continue working as an actor as much as possible in a 2016 Random Roles interview with The A.V. Club. Plus, he told a story about the time Jay Mohr thought he was a recovering meth addict, which was pretty funny.