Like many celebrities before her, Bella Thorne got her start on Disney Channel. The former child star starred alongside Zendaya on the hit series Shake It Up. While preteens all over the world adored the redheaded actor, little did they know that her role as CeCe Jones saved her family from homelessness.
Bella Thorne and her family were almost living on the street before Disney
Bella Thorne visits The IMDb Portrait Studio at Acura Festival Village on Location at Sundance 2023 on January 21, 2023 in Park City, Utah. | Corey Nickols/Getty Images for IMDb
Thorne grew up with a single mom and three siblings, and it was hard to make ends meet.
“We were living off Stouffer’s coupons, and that’s all we had to eat every day. That may not sound like a big deal to everybody, but when you’re a single mom raising four kids with debt and you have nothing to your name, it’s f****** s*****,” she said on MTV’s Happy, Sad, Confused podcast with Josh Horowitz.
Thorne had small roles in movies and TV series but it wasn’t enough to help her family.
The young star wasn’t interested in the part on Shake it Up but she knew she needed to audition due to her family’s position. “We were about to live physically on the street if I didn’t have that role,” she said on the podcast.
“I didn’t want to audition for Shake It Up!” she shared. Thorne continued, “I literally said in my audition, ‘I don’t sing. I don’t dance. I’m basically tone-deaf, and I’m not funny. So I don’t know why I’m here.’ And everybody just started laughing. They all thought it was a joke.”
Of course, she got the role, and her family ended up in a better position.
What happened to Bella Thorne when ‘Shake it Up’ ended?
When Shake it Up came to an end in 2013, Thorne found herself typecast. She said that everyone looked at her as a “Disney actress” and wouldn’t see her for many roles.
“It was like starting back at the bottom and working my way up all the way again,” she explained.
She told Vogue that her agents believed she should transition from Disney star to comedy to a “Rachel McAdams-type vibe” but she liked darker, grittier movies.
“What they want from her is not her,” her sister Dani Thorne told the outlet.
Thorne became known as a “wild child” and she became held to an “unfair standard.”
“It’s hard to be yourself,” she explained.
What is Bella Thorne doing now?
Bella Thorne Changed Her Voice as a Child Star ‘Because That Was the Whole Innocent Disney Appeal’
The former Disney star has come a long way. The actor, singer, and writer has learned to choose her roles, and while they may be “gritty” she is happy with her work.
“That’s what filmmaking is about, making something different and not always being so boxed in by these tiresome notions of what a film is supposed to be,” she told The Hollywood Reporter.
She has taken on many Indie film roles. “Indie filmmaking puts me in a lot of interesting positions to meet genuine, weird, eccentric, different people. That makes my job more interesting and makes up for the parts that aren’t always working so well,” she explained.
She went on to say that “what’s not working as well” is when she is unable to have her own thoughts or opinions. Over the years, she’s made waves for her polyamorous relationship with Mod Sun and Tana Mongeau, as well as her forays into OnlyFans and adult filmmaking.
She appears to have come out of the “Disney kid” box and is doing things her own way.
