Will We Still Love Justin Bieber Tomorrow?

Image by Kerosene Photography via Flickr

Growing up is hard to do. Especially if you’ve got the good fortune — or misfortune, depending on how you want to look at it — to be a teen sensation. The Hollywood graveyard is littered with the corpses of the once-hot careers of adolescent entertainers and child stars who couldn’t quite negotiate the tricky transition into adulthood.

For every Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jodie Foster, Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder, there are dozens of Corey Haims, Corey Feldmans, Brad Renfros, Bobby Browns, Leif Garretts and the kids from Diff’rnt Strokes — or pretty much every TV sitcom from the last 60 years.

Lindsay Lohan, Hilary Duff and Hayley Joel Osment, all once major stars, may not have ended up behind bars or six feet under, but their heydays seem to be behind them — before they’re even old enough to rent a car. And lately, LeAnn Rimes is better known for her tabloid exploits with a married man than her latest Top 10 hit, which was back in 2006.

Jennifer Love Hewitt, Regina King and Joseph Gordon-Levitt may still be doing okay for themselves, but not one single Cosby kid — unless you count C-lister Raven-Symoné — has managed to keep the spotlight focused on them.

As Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, New Kids on the Block, Backstreet Boys and every member of *NSYNC not named Justin prove, adolescent film stars may have a bit of an edge, since acting careers tend to enjoy more longevity than musical ones. They aren’t necessarily flavor-of-the-month based, and up and downs are more easily forgiven.

More than thirty years on, Meryl Streep is enjoying the biggest hits of her career (if still not a third Oscar), but the pop star, regardless of age, whose hits span an entire decade is both rare and lucky. That’s probably why so many of them, like Rimes and Mandy Moore, hedge their bets by launching acting careers.

Granted, few careers period manage the longevity of Meryl Streep’s, but child stars may have it harder because when the public falls for you as a cute little tyke or an angsty teen, it’s hard for people to accept you in the role of anything resembling a grown up (Exhibits A, B and C: Macauley Culkin, Claire Danes and Christina Ricci, who should be more gainfully employed than she is). And of course, sometimes poor choices or poor public and private behavior or all three do them in.

Of today’s batch of teen stars, who is most likely to follow in the recent footsteps of Rihanna, Taylor Swift and Scarlett Johansson, and succeed past the age of 20? Here are four top candidates.

Justin Bieber, 16 Those of you who think Miley Cyrus has more potential consider this: Hilary Duff was in pretty much the same place about six years ago, from the humble Disney Channel beginnings to the string of lightweight pop hits. Miley is a passable singer and actress whose generic brand of good-girl-next-door appeal doesn’t generally play well past early twentysomething. Justin, on the other hand, has the potential to be an entirely self-contained hit-making machine. He writes songs, plays instruments, and he doesn’t pretend to be anything he’s not. He looks and acts his age. Plus, he’s got something teen icons rarely have: street cred. Usher is his mentor, and Ludacris raps on “Baby,” which just became his first Top 10 single.

Dakota Fanning, 16 I’ll be honest. When she first burst onto the scene with that creepy old-soul-trapped-in-a-little-girl’s-body thing, I didn’t think her career would last a day past puberty. Now she’s 16, and growing up much more attractively than I ever thought she would. And the clips I’ve seen of her as Cherie Currie in the just-released The Runaways confirm that she’s not just a wunderkind. She possesses true acting talent that allows her to dig deep and break the surface of her characters.

Abigail Breslin, 13 An Oscar nomination at age 10 does not longevity guarantee. (Just ask Tatum O’Neal, who won, at age 10, for Paper Moon.) What makes Abigail so likely to thrive into her 20s is that so far she’s resisted doing the obvious things — teen movies and blockbuster genre pics — that end up limiting the career potential of her peers. That Oscar nomination was just a start. She’ll take one home before she turns 30.

Saoirse Ronan, 15 Ditto the Atonement Oscar nominee and star of The Lovely Bones. If she continues to work with pedigreed directors like Joe Wright, Peter Jackson and Peter Weir, and actors like Michelle Pfeiffer and Susan Sarandon, she could have Kate Winslet’s career, with or without her personal Titanic. And she won’t even have to change her nearly unpronounceable first name.

Which current teen stars do you think will still be working at 30? Who will make a comeback of Mickey Rourke proportions? In Hollwyood — to quote the title of Debbie Gibson’s final hit — anything is possible.