The Wonder Years Cast Doesn't Look Like This Anymore

For those of us who grew up with Kevin Arnold, Winnie Cooper, and Paul Pfeiffer on the coming-of-age series The Wonder Years, the soulful crooning of Joe Cocker's famous "With a Little Help from My Friends" arrangement and the grainy home video images of the show's iconic opening credits sequence will forever inspire a feeling of nostalgia. Still, it's hard to believe that nearly 30 years have passed since its 1988 premiere.

For millions of TV viewers who came of age in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Winnie Cooper was perfection, the dreamiest of dream girls. Sharing that opinion was Kevin Arnold (Fred Savage), who lived next door to Winnie Cooper. Over the 1988-1993 run of the ABC dramedy The Wonder Years, both Kevin and Winnie grew up, and Winnie became more than a friend. Kevin shared his first kiss with her, and she became his first love. They dated off and on throughout the show's history, and when they weren't together, Kevin pined for her.

Hollywood is known for chewing up and spitting out even the strongest individuals, but what does the movie machine do to children? Many don't get through unscathed, but there are those who don't succumb permanently to the drugs and decadence that come with youthful fame. Here are eight grown-up child stars who you'll still be able to find acting today.

Hollywood history is littered with tragic tales of young actors falling on hard times in adulthood. Substance abuse and mental illness are sad themes among Tinseltown's washed-up pups. Some choose to hang around and occasionally resurface in paparazzi pics looking worse for wear, while others get as far away from the industry as possible—Danny Lloyd (the kid from The Shining) went on to dabble in pig farming before settling into a career as a high school science teacher. While burning out and disappearing is a common script, not every child star suffers this fate.

It seems like few actors make the trek from child star to adult star successfully in Hollywood, but they're out there. You just may have forgotten about their earlier work. Some of the stars on this list took a hiatus at some point in their careers — out of sight; out of mind. Others worked on early projects we forgot all about or never saw in the first place. Not to mention, the simple act of growing up and looking different has rendered some of today's stars nearly unrecognizable from their younger selves.