From a teenage Leo DiCaprio showing up at a charity event to Pamela Anderson smiling for her high school yearbook, these are the faces you’ll recognize long before the fame hit.
Plenty of the actors, musicians, and other famous faces we follow today have actually been walking red carpets since their teenage years, and we’ve tracked down the pictures that prove it. Some of them grew up in the spotlight from the start thanks to well-known relatives, while others put in the work through small television roles, stage performances, and minor parts to build up their résumé before they’d even finished high school.
Below you’ll find 40 snapshots of stars in their younger years, starting with a teenage Leonardo DiCaprio at a celebrity charity basketball game and including a 14-year-old Natalie Portman walking the carpet at a film premiere.
Drew Barrymore at 15
At just 15 years old, Drew Barrymore already carried herself with the kind of effortless cool most adults spend a lifetime trying to fake, and it shows in this photo from the 1990 California premiere of Longtime Companion. But behind the glamour of that red carpet moment was a much heavier story unfolding in real time. That very same year, Barrymore made the bold decision to go public with her struggles, releasing a memoir titled Little Girl Lost in which she opened up in startling detail about her battles with addiction and the stints in rehab that had already defined much of her young life. It was a remarkably raw move for a teenager still figuring out who she wanted to be, both on screen and off it.