Look Back In Time: 20 Hollywood Stars — When They Made Their First Big Films

From Leo to Drew, check out this collection of A-listers to be as they got their feet wet in the wacky world of show business.

From Leo to Drew, check out this collection of A-listers to be as they got their feet wet in the wacky world of show business.

Anna Paquin hit all the right notes with her first film role. She won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress at just 11-years-old in the 1994 drama The Piano.

Dakota Fanning got her big break at age 7 when she starred opposite Sean Penn in the 2001 film I Am Sam.

Drew Barrymore was the envy of kids everywhere at just 7-years-old when she befriended an extraterrestrial in Steven Spielberg's 1982 blockbuster ET.

Elijah Wood began his eclectic career growing up before audience's eyes in films that included 1992's Forever Young and 1993’s The Good Son.

Jodie Foster was hailed as an amazing actress at age 14 for her first star vehicle, Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt's first big part as Tommy Solomon on the television hit 3rd Rock From The Sun, which ran from 1996 to 2001, helped rocket him to success.

Kristen Stewart could run but she couldn't hide from fame after starring opposite Jodie Foster in 2002's Panic Room. Today, Stewart cringes whenever she looks at photographs taken around that time, saying she resembled "a boy."

Leonardo DiCaprio’s career began with a series of TV roles on Growing Pains, Parenthood and Roseanne, before a pair of high-profile spots in What's Eating Gilbert Grape and This Boy's Life put him on the fast track to superstardom.

Playing an English schoolboy taken prisoner in China, a 13-year-old Christian Bale impressed critics in Empire of the Sun, the film based on J.G. Ballard's autobiographical novel. "I'd nothing to lose, I wasn't thinking in terms of a career. I wasn't really thinking about the consequences at all," he has said of his first big break.

Way before the movie Horrible Bosses and TV show Valerie, Jason Bateman played little James Cooper Ingalls in the early '80s on Little House on the Prairie.

Natalie Portman played an orphan who is taken in by a hitman in 1994's The Professional. "They hold the keys to wisdom in their innocence, or are so creepily adult they make us reflect on how creepy adults are," she once said of precocious children.

Before he became known as all about his off-on girlfriend Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult was the 12-year-old star of About a Boy. After all these years as an actor he can finally deal with "turning round and seeing people staring," though, he adds, "occasionally you get followed — which is slightly odd."

When Goonies came out in June 1985, it instantly made Sean Astin a star. But, Astin reveals, "The only reason I got Goonies is because my dad worked with me for six hours on the audition. I'm very grateful to him for my career."

Playing a genius teenage doctor on Doogie Howser from 1989 to 1993 catapulted Neil Patrick Harris to fame. "I've managed to get to do lots of amazing, great things from it," notes the actor. "Certainly people still call me Doogie. But in a weird way, it's beneficial, because I can play wildly against that image, and people think it's funny."

Kirsten Dunst had her first big role, and kiss, at 11 years of age in 1994's Interview with a Vampire. "It was just a peck," Dunst explains of smooching her costar Brad Pitt onscreen. "Everyone at the time was like, 'You're so lucky you kissed Brad Pitt,' but I thought it was disgusting. I didn't kiss anyone else until I was 16, I think. I was a late bloomer."

Vampires were still far off in the future when a then 13-year-old Taylor Lautner starred in the 2005 3-D movie The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl.

In 1996, years before she starred as the voice in Her, Scarlett Johansson, then 11, narrated Manny & Lo as the character Manny. Her twin brother Hunter also appeared in the movie.

Shia LaBeouf was still more nice than naughty when he starred in 1998's The Christmas Path at age 12.

In 2000 Taylor Momsen was just 7, but she stole the spotlight in her breakout role as Cindy Lou Who in How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Ethan Hawke discovered fame at 14 in his first feature, the 1985 sci-fi fantasy film Explorers. "You're thinking like a professional before you know yourself as a human being," says Hawke, of becoming a child star alongside River Phoenix, thanks to the film. "The real job of an artist is bigger than being successful, and young people can't see that yet. The road is littered with casualties."