Josh Peck wishes he had been given the chance to 'try something else' before becoming a child star
Josh Peck wishes he had been given "the opportunity to try something else" before finding fame but admitted that it was the "financial insecurity" of his family that led him into it.
Josh Peck wishes he had been given "the opportunity to try something else" before finding early fame.
The 38-year-old actor joined the cast of 'The Amanda Show' on Nickelodeon in the late 1990s and then landed the sitcom 'Drake and Josh' for the network opposite Drake Bell but admitted that his child stardom mainly came as a result of "financial insecurity" within his single-parent family.
Speaking on the 'Tea Time with Raven and Miranda' podcast, he told the former Disney Channel star and her wife: "In a perfect world, I should have been allowed the opportunity to try something else. "People, when they ask 'Will your kids be in acting?'
"Well, you have to understand I had a single mom, I never met my pops, [I am an] only child.
"We were pretty financially insecure and unstable for my entire life.
"I was a heavy kid who had this talent. I was good at this thing and my mom said 'Do it, it gives you confidence. Go for it!' She also was a bit of an unrealised performer.
"So she poured gasoline on it. We were all in. The idea that we could move from New York to LA because I got 'The Amanda Show', it was such a rare set of circumstances that allowed for it to happen."
The 'Summer Camp' star - who has Max, six, and two-year-old Shai with his wife Paige O'Brien and she is expecting their third - is hopeful that his own children will always have a "stable home" so it would be unlikely that they would end up in showbiz at such a young age, but then reflected that he developed a "special" kind of family during his years of childhood acting.
He said: "My kids, God willing, will have a stable home. And the idea of being able to do that at a young age probably would not reveal itself.
"But, this is so corny, I love between action and cut. I really do. Sitcoms are special. The kind of family that you build on those shows, and the people. Don't you love that everyone kind of has a uniform even though they don't? You see guys in a bunch of Carhartt, in construction boots and I'm like 'You're either driving truck or building set, and you left at 3AM to be here!"
