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.

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.

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!

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.