Child actor recalls receiving disturbing prison mail from fans during peak of '90s fame
Justin Cooper was eight years old when he began experiencing the not-so-friendly side of fame.
Cooper, who starred as Jim Carrey's son in the 1997 comedy "Liar Liar," revealed one dark side of the business during an appearance on the "Not So Little Rascals" podcast.
The "Brother's Keeper" actor told co-hosts Jordan Warkol and Blake Collins that his mother did a "really good job" of protecting him from the outside world while growing up in front of the cameras, but that there were still scary moments associated with fame.
"She would tell me later on about, like, prison mail that I would get that she never showed me," Cooper said before explaining that he would receive "letters from people in jail."
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"Dudes in jail talking about how they're such a big fan of me ... and you're such a cute kid," he remembered.
Cooper praised his mother for protecting him during a pivotal time in his career, and noted that she "never, ever left me alone with anybody on set."
"You know, there's a lot of acting parents that you hear of back in the day that are just like, 'OK, ya, go. Do whatever they tell you to do. Bye!' and my mom was not like that," he said. "Almost to a fault."
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"I remember a story that just blew my mind. So Don Rickles played Mr. Wilson in 'Dennis the Menace Strikes Again,' and he's known for being a, you know, foul-mouthed comic," Cooper recalled.
"She went up to him and, is like, 'I don't want you to use any language like that in front of my kid.'"
After years in the business, Cooper stepped away from the spotlight when auditions started to feel like work.
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"You've got to sit in the car for 45, 50 minutes to get out there, and then I've got to do this, and then I gotta go home and start my homework, and I want to just go home right now and talk to girls on AIM," he said.
"After a while of me kind of just being like, I got another audition, my mom was like, 'Look, if you don't want to do it anymore, you don't have to.'"
Cooper feared his mother may have been disappointed by his decision to step away from the business due to her close connection to his career.
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"My relationship with my mom was great for most of the time," he said. "In high school it got a little strange ... I stopped acting, I started smoking weed."
He remembered how she found his "stash" and admitted "that put a little strain" on their relationship for a while.
"Throughout my whole acting phase, she was always there ... taking me on auditions, all the stuff, helping me, running lines," Cooper said.