10 Best Child Actors On TV

When it comes to child actors, there's a few different breeds. First, and most obviously, is the incompetent one. They're scenery with pigtails, and the fewer lines they have to deliver, the better. Then there's the mini-adult, which you can spot from a mile away. The insipid smile, the cutesy exterior that you just know barely hides the demon spawn lying just beneath the surface. They don't even come off as children, not really; they've been trained since they were toddlers exactly what image they were supposed to project, and it's vaguely off-putting. There they stand, with their overalls and gap-toothed grins, more grown-up and competent at seven and a half years old than you'll ever be. But then every once in a while there are really talented child actors, who have such a sense of naturalism about them that they actually feel like real kids. They have solid interactions with their adult co-stars, and maybe even steal scenes every once in a while. When you're a ten year old who can hold your own in a profession that most people spend years of their lives training for, well...that's something worthy of note. So let's raise a glass to the kids out there who manage to defy the stereotypes of child actors, because those little guys are awesome.

10. Chandler Riggs - The Walking Dead

It's isn't easy staring down the barrel of puberty amidst the zombie apocalypse, and it isn't easy being the one kid on the extremely adult Walking Dead. Lesser actors would have faltered with such heavy material, but Chandler Riggs as Carl Jr rises to the challenge. He brings to life an average kid coming of age in a war zone, and all the emotional issues that entails. It's a difficult role to play by virtue of the fact that he's acting things that he has no emotional reference for. How do you ask a teenager to play a character who loses his home and almost everything that matters to him, who has to shoot his surrogate father figure and his mother after they turn into zombies? This is so far outside the realm of typical child characters it's not even funny. What's more, he brings shades of grey and a sense of grit to the role. Carl Jr isn't a perfect kid by any stretch of the imagination. He's had to grow up way too fast and seems perpetually at risk of losing his capacity to feel. He isn't always likeable, but he's always believable, which is far more important.