There’s been a lot of focus in recent months on the children of Hollywood’s biggest stars and the unique experience that comes with that. Much of the attention has been around the opportunities that the “nepo babies” are afforded if they want to follow their parents into the entertainment business, but being raised amongst celebrities and accompanying your parents to wherever their next project was filming is a wholly different upbringing than most of us experienced. Eva Amurri, daughter of Susan Sarandon, recently let her followers in on what it was like growing up on movie sets and her relationships with other A-listers’ children.
Eva Amurri, who was part of the cast of Fox musical drama Monarch with her mom Susan Sarandon, said some people compare the experience of growing up in Hollywood to being raised “in the circus,” and she confirmed on TikTok that she grew up around the children of not just her parents’ co-stars, but those of the directors and other crew members as well. She said:
People in the industry, who grew up in the industry, sometimes liken the experience to, like, growing up in the circus, in the sense that you kind of spend these really surreal periods of time really closely intertwined with other people, whether that’s other people’s families or individuals as an actress, too, it happens, where you’re just spending all this quality time with a certain group. And you become so, so close, almost like family. And then one of the things that’s really disorienting about the acting world is that then, when the project is done, a lot of times you just, everyone goes their separate ways, and you kind of just disappear back into real life, and it can be really sad sometimes.
That does sound like a pretty unique experience — and a jarring one — to form bonds with other children who understand the situation you’re in, only to lose contact with that found family altogether once a movie or TV show is finished.
I’d have to imagine that’s different today, with the availability of social media, but back then, Eva Amurri — whose father is Italian director Franco Amurri but was raised by her mother’s longtime partner Tim Robbins — said she and her family were able to keep in touch with some families more than others. She continued:
So I have lots of great memories of different people who, we became really close to and spent holidays with if those things were happening while we were filming and other kind of like children of, I think the term people use now is ‘nepo babies.’ But yeah, so you spend that time together, and then you always sort of have this thing in common, and then we kind of stayed close with some families over the years and then other ones not as much. But it’s always kind of a unique experience to grow up that way, and so I think there is a certain common thread that you feel with other people who grow up in this strange world.
It’s easy to see how children who grow up under such circumstances would become fast friends with others who understand that lifestyle, or, as Eva Amurri said, always feel a common thread with other so-called nepo babies.
Eva Amurri appeared in the movie Saved! in 2009 and played Jackie in Californication Season 3. She also had a guest role on Friends alongside her mother. You can see her portraying a younger version of Susan Sarandon’s character Dottie on Monarch, whose lone season is available to stream with a Hulu subscription. You can also keep an eye out for Sarandon on the 2023 Movie Release Schedule, as she was announced to be joining the DC Extended Universe film Blue Beetle set for release later this year.