The Tragic Life Of Child Star Raven-Symoné

Children across the country grew up watching Raven-Symoné Christina Pearlman (aka Raven) on screen. The child star first tasted fame when she was cast as Olivia Kendall in "The Cosby Show," and she only grew more famous thanks to roles in projects like "Hangin' with Mr. Cooper," "Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century," "That's So Raven," "The Cheetah Girls," and "The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement." Whether it was the Disney Channel or the big screen, if Raven was in a project, audiences showed up.

However, being a Disney darling wasn't all it appeared to be. From the outside, it seemed like Raven had it all — fame, fortune, fans, and the respect of her peers. As has since been revealed, though, Raven's life as a child actor wasn't easy, and because of all the difficulties she faced while growing up, life hasn't necessarily gotten easier for her as an adult. Take a closer look at the tragic life of child star Raven-Symoné.

Many former child actors have, as adults, revealed the horrors of Hollywood that they faced at far too young an age, and it seems that the child stars of the 1980s, '90s, and '00s faced some of the most intense issues. The stunning Raven-Symoné has been very vocal about her toxic experiences as a child actor, and she's acutely aware of the impact those experiences have had on her as an adult. "I wish I was living now as a younger person. I probably wouldn't have so many mental issues," Raven said in a 2017 interview with People.

The actor went on to detail the body shaming she experienced as a child star — and it wasn't limited to just one project. She rose to fame thanks to her role on "The Cosby Show," leading the cast of "That's So Raven," as well as her singing career and parts in various films (including a Lifetime movie that featured Raven-Symoné). Despite her successful career, however, she never escaped body shaming. During an episode of "The View" back in 2015, Raven recalled one of her first experiences with an adult being needlessly concerned about her weight: "I remember not being able to have the bagel or anything ... And I remember people would be like, 'You can't eat that. You're getting fat!' I'm like, 'I'm 7! I'm hungry!'" While the actor has embraced her body as an adult, she still sees others encountering the same issues she faced as a child. "You want to talk about how we are judgmental to each other and this and this. But it's being created in the industry that we're in," she told People.

The body shaming Raven-Symoné faced inevitably carried into her teen years, and it resulted in drastic measures. Before she was 18 years old, Raven underwent plastic surgery to change her body, and it was at the behest of her father. "My dad suggested strongly that I should get my breasts reduced. He was like, 'So you don't feel bad, is there anything you want?' I was like, 'What? Yeah, if I get lipo, will people stop calling me fat?' So, I got a twofer [two for one]," the actor said on an episode of her podcast "The Best Podcast Ever with Raven and Miranda," clarifying that she underwent both a breast reduction and liposuction at 15 years old.

The forced surgeries carried many repercussions, including some medical scares. During her first procedure, Raven had a seizure. The actor woke up with a dry mouth and she unable to breathe, and the scare from the experience is something she still deals with as an adult. "It was just a mess, being that young, and the pain of it all, honey. I disassociated, so the recovery was a little painful. I had scars, I still have scar tissue to this day. I gained weight after and had to go back for a quick little bit more out because they were still too big," the "Black-ish" star said, adding that she was even subject to body shaming after the procedures because her body still looked different from those of the teen actors around her.

No one achieves the level of fame Raven-Symoné had as an actor without hard work. Unfortunately for Raven, the hard work began when she was a child. As she shared in an interview for TV One, the young star was pressured by her parents to succeed. Her mother and father took turns working at night and taking Raven to auditions during the day, all the while reminding her that she was working. "This is a job; you can't mess up. This is not for fun, but it is fun. Make sure you respect people. Don't do this, don't do that. It's a lot of rules in place," Raven said of the mentality her parents gave her as a child. "It's doing an album at 5 and staying in the studio until 2, 1 o'clock in the morning, and you're 5 years old knowing that this is the next step in your career so suck it up and let's do it," she added.

All of the work and pressure Raven had as a child resulted in some serious mental health struggles as an adult (more on that later), and the actor has blocked out portions of her childhood. As a child, Raven worked on one of the most iconic sitcoms of all time, "The Cosby Show," but she doesn't remember anything from her time actively working on set. When she turned 18, Raven then turned to therapy to get to the root of her memory lapse. "It's disassociation," she said. "I just black out. I turn into who I'm supposed to be when the camera's on, and then I come back to when normal life resumes," she explained.

Raven-Symoné has spent almost her entire life in the entertainment industry, and it hasn't always been kind to her. Because of the issues she's faced as an entertainer, Raven, understandably, holds a lot of resentment toward the industry. "This industry, as long as I've been in it, will break you down, build you up, break you down, build you up. I'm so over it. I sit in that anger for this industry because it's been so many different things," Raven said in an interview with Yahoo Entertainment in 2020.

In recent years, Raven has been very vocal about how she spent the first part of her life keeping her private affairs to herself — something she was encouraged to do from early on. But as she's aged and learned more about herself, Raven has rejected that stance. For example, it took her some time before Raven shared the truth about her sexuality to the public, but when she came out, she found that she felt comfortable sharing more of her thoughts with fans. "I'd already come to terms with my sexuality, that's when I went on 'The View' and started to express my views. I learned my opinion is my opinion, and that's what it is," Raven told Yahoo. She did hesitate to come out publicly, but some encouragement from her former "Sister Act" co-star Demond Green helped her in the process. "[He] told me that if I'm going to be in the position I'm in, with the name that I have, there [are] certain things that I'm going to have to do that I don't want to do," Raven told Today.

One of Raven-Symoné's biggest projects as a child star was "The Cheetah Girls," a Disney Channel Original Movie that she starred in alongside Adrienne Houghton (née Bailon), Kiely Williams, and Sabrina Bryan. The film was a hit, and it warranted two major sequels — a second one set in Spain and a third set in India. The second film was also very successful for the Disney Channel, and audiences were thrilled for the young women to return for the third installment, but some of that excitement waned when fans learned that Raven wasn't going to be in the film. At the time, Raven's co-stars said that her absence was due to other career pursuits. "She's really actively pursuing her solo career, and we would never want to hold her back from anything. We're just so proud of her and the things she's done for people of color on the Disney Channel," Williams told the National Ledger in 2007.

Raven, though, has always been a little more honest about why she didn't sign up for the third movie, which had to do with how she felt on the set of the second film. "There were territorial issues. There were catfights," Raven told the National Ledger. As an adult, Raven was even more honest about why she wasn't in the third film. "The cliquish way that there was during that movie made me feel excluded from my original team. Not that it was strong to begin with, but I felt excluded ... And we have other things that just led up to that moment that just were weird, personal, [and] outside of business," she told Williams during an Instagram Live session in 2020.

As noted, Raven-Symoné didn't have the best time on the set of "The Cheetah Girls 2," and much of it had to do with her relationship with her former co-star, Kiely Williams. The two clashed while working together, with Raven recalling how Williams once shared that she had unsuccessfully auditioned for "The Cosby Show," and the anecdote upset Raven, leading Raven to feel like an outsider. While filming "The Cheetah Girls 2," Raven became close with her other co-star, Belinda Peregrin, as she, too, felt excluded. The dynamics ultimately led Raven to quit the group for good after they wrapped the second film.

Raven and Williams reunited and hashed out their issues during an Instagram Live in 2020, but they also discussed another part of the dynamic that Raven found toxic — Williams' relationship with their former co-star Adrienne Houghton. "She didn't come to my dad's funeral or call me when he died," Williams told Raven of Houghton. "You can say what you want about me and how you felt about me, but you can't ever say that I didn't f*cking ride for Adrienne," she added. Raven, who has a positive relationship with Houghton, told Williams, "Y'all prideful *sses need to calm down, take a pill for a second, and say, 'I'm pissed at you, but let's talk about it.'" Williams seemed open to the suggestion, but the two still don't appear to be on speaking terms, leaving the group with some of the same fractures from when they were younger.

The tragedies Raven-Symoné has faced haven't been limited to her time as a child actor. In 2023, Raven suffered the heartbreaking loss of her brother Blaize Pearman, who died of colon cancer. Raven was 38 when her brother died, and he was 31, the tragedy happening just before both of their birthdays. "Thank you [for] all the love yesterday. It was felt beyond. Hard to fully celebrate knowing that I'm here and he is not," she said in an Instagram video shared on her first birthday following Pearman's death.

Days later, on what would've been Pearman's 32nd birthday, Raven posted a tribute to her brother on Instagram, celebrating the life he lived and what she loved most about him. "You were intelligent, kind, stubborn, and the peacemaker of the bunch. Your humor and willingness to try anything will be cherished and maintained by those you left behind," Raven wrote. The actor also encouraged her followers to look out for their health through doctor's appointments, diet, and exercise to avoid a similar fate as her brother. "Life is short, and shorter if you don't take care of your health," she said.

Raven-Symoné has faced intense mental health issues in her life, which started when she was a child actor and continued into adulthood. Since becoming an adult, the entertainer has been very proactive in addressing these issues. For example, when she turned 18, Raven told her parents she wanted to begin therapy. Although they didn't understand why she wanted therapy, Raven went forward and got some answers. "Started there, got pretty much the understanding that I have PTSD and ... I don't have bipolar syndrome, but I have depression that is in that world, so took some medicines for that," Raven told Mayim Bialik on a 2022 episode of the podcast "Mayim Bialik's Breakdown."

Therapy and medication were just the start of Raven's journey of facing her mental health diagnoses. The actor had to figure out which medication worked best for her, and she quit therapy for a time and focused on meditation. She has also found solace in self-help books, though she did have to return to therapy to deal with the anger she didn't realize she had repressed. "Growing up in the industry from the age of 16 months to 36 years old leaves an interesting trail of breadcrumbs that can be used in a positive light for others, can help others, can inform others. And when it comes to me personally, I'm dealing with that through my therapist," Raven said.

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.

Within a single year of her life, Raven-Symoné suffered not one but two major losses. In 2024, almost a year after revealing that her brother had died, Raven shared that her father Christopher Pearman had died, too. "My life has been long and abundant. And the path I'm on started with a dream. Hope he is watching with a smile on his face," Raven wrote on Instagram alongside a photo of herself as a child embracing her parents.

Raven has kept the precise nature of her relationship with her parents private, but she has discussed certain aspects of it throughout the years. For example, she did address the fact that her father encouraged her to get plastic surgery at a young age. What's more, on an episode of the podcast "Howie Mandel Does Stuff," the actor implied that there may have been some issues between her and her parents in the past. "They did a lot of things right. I learned a lot of things from them that I wouldn't have learned from anybody else. I'm not negating that at all, and just like with everybody else, you can have the most perfect adult raising a child, and the child is always going to find things that are wrong because nobody's perfect," Raven said. Despite whatever issues the family faced, Raven's heartfelt tribute to her father on Instagram implies they were on good terms when he died.

People on the internet have a tendency to take comments out of context and overreact to innocuous remarks, and Raven-Symoné knows that to be true. In 2024, Raven posted a video on TikTok urging her followers to stop sending her wife, Miranda Pearman-Maday, death threats. "It is disrespectful to her and, in turn, disrespectful to me. Stop it," said Raven in the video.

The death threats came after Raven's wife mentioned on a podcast that she didn't watch "That's So Raven" as a kid. Listeners misunderstood Pearman-Maday's comment, which she clarified on TikTok. "I hope to clear the air right now in letting you all know that I never had once said that I did not know who Raven was. I only ever said that I did not grow up watching 'That's So Raven,'" she said. Raven captioned the video with a terse and firm statement: "Haters will hate and by all means do you boo boo. HOWEVER, do not spread lies and threaten my wife, marriage, or her character. I chose her and all of her ... Stop," she wrote. The truth about Raven-Symoné's wife is that she did, in fact, know who Raven was when they first met in 2015, but Pearman-Maday hadn't seen much of Raven's work until after they got to know each other. Pearman-Maday insists that she has since watched most of Raven's past projects and even tags along and waits back stage to support her partner's acting career.