Justin Cooper, who played Jim Carrey’s son in the 1997 film “Liar Liar,” says he received unsettling letters from prison inmates while he was still a child actor.
Cooper made the disclosure on the “Not So Little Rascals” podcast, hosted by Jordan Warkol and Blake Collins. He said his mother shielded him from much of the correspondence at the time and only told him about it later.
“She would tell me later on about, like, prison mail that I would get that she never showed me,” Cooper said, describing them as “letters from people in jail.”
He recalled the tone of some of the messages: “Dudes in jail talking about how they’re such a big fan of me … and you’re such a cute kid.”
Cooper, who was eight when he starred in “Liar Liar” and has also appeared in “Brother’s Keeper,” credited his mother with keeping him safe throughout his time in the industry. He said she “never, ever left me alone with anybody on set,” contrasting her approach with other parents in Hollywood.
“There’s a lot of acting parents that you hear of back in the day that are just like, ‘OK, ya, go. Do whatever they tell you to do. Bye!’ and my mom was not like that,” he said. “Almost to a fault.”
One memory stood out to him involving comedian Don Rickles, who played Mr. Wilson in “Dennis the Menace Strikes Again.” Rickles was known for his blunt, foul-mouthed comedic style, and Cooper said his mother confronted him directly.
“She went up to him and, is like, ‘I don’t want you to use any language like that in front of my kid.'”
Cooper eventually stepped back from acting once the routine of auditions began to feel like a burden rather than fun.
“You’ve got to sit in the car for 45, 50 minutes to get out there, and then I’ve got to do this, and then I gotta go home and start my homework, and I want to just go home right now and talk to girls on AIM,” he said.
He said his mother ultimately gave him the choice to walk away. “After a while of me kind of just being like, I got another audition, my mom was like, ‘Look, if you don’t want to do it anymore, you don’t have to.'”
Cooper said he worried his decision to leave acting might have disappointed his mother, given how involved she had been in his career. Their relationship grew more complicated during his teenage years.
“My relationship with my mom was great for most of the time,” he said. “In high school it got a little strange … I stopped acting, I started smoking weed.”
He said she eventually discovered his “stash,” which “put a little strain” on their relationship for a time. Still, he emphasized her role throughout his acting career.
“Throughout my whole acting phase, she was always there … taking me on auditions, all the stuff, helping me, running lines,” Cooper said.
