'Camp Rock' Star Alyson Stoner Reveals Financial Ruin After Disney Fame

Former Disney star Alyson Stoner is pulling back the curtain on their difficult journey from child stardom to adult self-discovery, revealing the devastating financial and emotional challenges they faced along the way.

In a candid conversation with Zibby Owens, Alyson Stoner reflected on the moment their bank account hit zero, leaving them reeling after being taken advantage of by people they trusted.

“I was so scared,” Stoner admitted. “I wasn’t going to be competent enough to recognize and to prevent it from happening again. Who’s to say? I thought I was giving my best shot at being responsible and conscientious with spending and saving and even investing. And it still happened.”

The 32-year-old described the grief of losing not only their financial security but also their access to education, something they had always planned for.

“That one, oh, that hurts the most,” they said. “Beyond material access and knowledge, access to information, access to tools, to language, to spaces where people can learn, I mean, that’s so critical and so I have a lot of grief there.”

Still, Stoner refused to stay in despair.

Instead, Stoner took quick steps to rebuild.

“I, as quickly as I could, figured out how to do so, enrolled myself in different certification programs and just said, okay, it’s not gonna be what I thought it was gonna be, but I can’t keep focusing on the past,” they explained. “I really just have to pick up where I am right now and work with what I got.”

Their resilience, they clarified, didn’t come in sweeping waves of strength.

“This kind of ‘resilience,’ it was earned in tiny breadcrumbs,” they said. “It was not like I woke up feeling particularly courageous. It really was trying to make sense of the situation at hand and aligning myself to the values I purported to uphold.”

Now, Stoner channels their experiences into advocacy, even participating in policy work they never imagined.

“The advocacy I do today, I would have never guessed. I didn’t even know I would be capable of sitting in on meetings with the Law Commission, drafting language for a bill to protect minors. And trust me, it’s accompanied by a lot of search engine activity,” they laughed. “I’m sometimes on the phone while googling terms like, what am I doing here? How’d I get here?”

The former child star also spoke about the loneliness they felt as one of the first in their peer group to begin publicly processing these struggles.

“It has felt over the last 10-plus years quite lonely. And I didn’t want to just sound like someone shouting from the abyss, ‘Hey, care about this cause!’” they admitted.

But as more of their generation of performers step forward, they feel a shift.

“I’m hoping not only for their own healing journeys that they come forward when they’re ready, but also societally that we use that as a proxy to examine what we’re doing when we share content of young people online now,” Stoner said.

Ultimately, when asked if they would do it all over again, Stoner didn’t hesitate. “At six years old, I didn’t have the ability to decide. At 32, I would absolutely never do that again.”

Stoner’s candid reflections arrive in the wake of a larger reckoning within the child star community.

Just two years ago, former "iCarly" actress Jennette McCurdy made waves with her bestselling memoir "I’m Glad My Mom Died," in which she exposed the toxic environment at Nickelodeon and detailed the abuse and exploitation she endured behind the scenes.

Much like McCurdy, Stoner is pulling back the curtain on the darker realities of growing up in the entertainment industry, emphasizing not only the financial and emotional toll but also the long-term impact on education, relationships, and identity.

While McCurdy’s book opened the door to long-overdue conversations about the treatment of child actors, Stoner’s memoir continues that dialogue, placing their own story within a broader pattern of exploitation.

“Semi-Well-Adjusted Despite Literally Everything” is out now.