Jason Ritter: I ‘Admit’ My 1st Acting Gig Was a ‘Full-On Nepotism Hire’

A leg up. Not everyone starts at the bottom in Hollywood — especially if their parents are already famous. These celebrity kids have spoken out about being “nepo babies.”

Some Euphoria fans were shocked to learn Maude Apatow had famous parents, The Other Woman star Leslie Mann and writer/director Judd Apatow (The 40-Year-Old Virgin). Her family even gave Maude her first onscreen roles as a child in Knocked Up and Funny People. She wasn’t thrilled when she saw the internet calling her a “nepotism baby,” but she understands the label.

“At first I was sad,” she told Net-A-Porter in September 2022, adding that she’d rather be judged on her talent. “I try not to let it get to me because I obviously understand that I’m in such a lucky position. A lot of people [in a similar position] have proven themselves over the years, so I’ve got to keep going and make good work. It’s so early in my career, I don’t have much to show yet, but hopefully one day I’ll be really proud of the stuff I’ve done by myself.”

Lily-Rose Depp, meanwhile, said having model Vanessa Paradis as her mother and Edward Scissorhands star Johnny Depp as her dad may have scored her an audition — but she claimed nepotism never got her a job.

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“The internet seems to care a lot about that kind of stuff. People are going to have preconceived ideas about you or how you got there, and I can definitely say that nothing is going to get you the part except for being right for the part,” she told Elle in December 2022.

She alleged, “The internet cares a lot more about who your family is than the people who are casting you in things. Maybe you get your foot in the door, but you still just have your foot in the door. There’s a lot of work that comes after that.”

Though the term “nepo baby” is new, nepotism in Tinseltown has been around for decades. Jamie Lee Curtis acknowledged how favoritism has helped her career. Her parents were stars in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Mom Janet Leigh was in Psycho and Bye Bye Birdie while dad Tony Curtis was in Spartacus and Some Like It Hot.

“It’s important for me, given that I’m this bougie princess from Los Angeles — even if I claim I worked hard, I’ve never really worked hard a day in my life,” she told The New Yorker in December 2019.

Scroll down to hear from more celebrities with famous parents who have spoken out about nepotism in Hollywood.

Parents: John Ritter (actor) and Nancy Morgan (actress)

“Oh, as a little kid, when I was maybe 6 or something like that, my dad [John Ritter] was doing this cartoon called The Real Story of O Christmas Tree. I will say, without any hesitation, this was like a full-on nepotism hire,” the Parenthood alum recalled of his first acting gig during an appearance on SiriusXM’s “The Jess Cagle Show” in March 2023. “ I will admit that. He for sure got me the job. I did try to stay away from that later.”

He added: “I got to play Little Acorn in The Real Story of O Christmas Tree, and [my dad] played my Uncle Piney. It was funny because, as I grew up and I found that recording again, I went, ‘Oh, they must have sped up my voice to make it that high.’ Both my mom and dad were like, ‘No, no. That was [it], yeah… It was pretty high. Jason, that was your voice.’”

Parents: Leslie Mann (This Is 40) and Judd Apatow (writer/director)

“A lot of people [in a similar position] have proven themselves over the years, so I’ve got to keep going and make good work,” Apatow told Net-A-Porter in September 2022. “It’s so early in my career, I don’t have much to show yet, but hopefully one day I’ll be really proud of the stuff I’ve done by myself.”

Parents: Vanessa Paradis (model) and Johnny Depp (Pirates of the Caribbean)

“It’s weird to me to reduce somebody to the idea that they’re only there because it’s a generational thing. It just doesn’t make any sense,” she told Elle in December 2022. “If somebody’s mom or dad is a doctor, and then the kid becomes a doctor, you’re not going to be like, ‘Well, you’re only a doctor because your parent is a doctor.’ It’s like, ‘No, I went to medical school and trained.’ … I just hear it a lot more about women, and I don’t think that it’s a coincidence.”

Parents: Meg Ryan (You’ve Got Mail) and Dennis Quaid (Parent Trap)

The star of The Boys said he once considered changing his last name and refused to let his dad get him an agent. “I knew that people would constantly say, ‘Oh, I know how he got that job,'” he told Thrillist in June 2022. “And they’re still going to say that. It’s fine. But as long as I knew how I got there, that would be enough.”

Parents: Janet Leigh (Psycho) and Tony Curtis (Some Like It Hot) 

“It’s important for me, given that I’m this bougie princess from Los Angeles — even if I claim I worked hard, I’ve never really worked hard a day in my life,” she told The New Yorker in December 2019. “I wrote a short story once that was semi-autobiographical, which I’ll never publish, a novella actually – the child in the story was raised in New York with famous parents. The father in that story wrote an autobiography, titled Access of Kings. It was that idea that, when you’re famous, you get this incredible access, you get opportunities to see things that other people don’t get to see, you get ease of access everywhere you go. All of that is a great, lovely benefit to the part that you give up, which is your privacy. So it’s a balance.”

Parents: Blythe Danner (Meet the Parents) and Bruce Paltrow (St. Elsewhere) 

“As the child of someone, you get access other people don’t have, so the playing field is not level in that way,” the Goop founder said on Hailey Bieber’s YouTube show, Who’s In My Bathroom?, in July 2022. However, I really do feel that once your foot is in the door, which you unfairly got in, then you almost have to work twice as hard and be twice as good.”

Parents: Kim Basinger (L.A. Confidential) and Alec Baldwin (30 Rock)

“I don’t think I ever would’ve been scouted as a model if it weren’t for who my parents are,” the model said while on Red Table Talk with her mom in April 2022. “You have a lot more to prove because you’re always going to have that comparison to your parents.”

She later added via TikTok: “Nothing is worse than when someone is born into a famous family or between two famous parents… and they fail to, like, acknowledge how these doors were opened for them and how they’ve had it a lot easier than other people.”

Parents: Yolanda Hadid (model) and Mohammed Hadid (real estate developer)

“I know I come from privilege, so when I started there was this big guilt of privilege, obviously. … I’ve always had this big work ethic because my parents came from nothing and I worked hard to honor them,” the model told Vogue Australia in June 2018.

She added: “There are so many girls who come [from] all over the world and work their arses off and send money home to their families like my mother did, and I wanted to stand next to them backstage and for them to look at me and respect me and to know that it’s never about me trying to overshadow or take their place.”

In March 2023, Hadid openly referred to herself as a nepo baby. “Technically I’m a nepotism baby,” the model told the Sunday Times. “My parents came from very little, [but] I’ve always acknowledged that I come from privilege. My parents told me, ‘Just because you have parents who were successful, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t walk into the job being as nice and as hard-working as you can be.’ ”

Parents: Uma Thurman (Kill Bill) and Ethan Hawke (Boyhood)

“I feel like the only way to handle the nepotism thing — which definitely gives you massive advantages in this life — is, you will get chances for free, but the chances will not be infinite,” the Stranger Things star told Rolling Stone in September 2022.

“So you have to keep working and do a good job. If you do a bad job, the chances will stop. That’s my ethos.”

Parents: Eugene Levy (American Pie) and Deborah Divine (producer)

“I’ve never really turned to my dad for anything, I think out of fear of the label of nepotism,” the Schitt’s Creek creator told Page Six in March 2018. “Entertainment seems to be the only arena where children who pursue the work of their parents, which is an inherently natural thing to do, is met with a lot of skepticism. And so for my whole life, leading up to [Schitt’s Creek], I’ve always tried to do everything on my own, I guess to prove, mainly to myself, that I could do it.”

He added, “Now that we’re working together it’s a completely different story, but I needed to prove to myself that I could stand on my own.”