They know you know what their parents do.
So if they want to do what their parents do—or anything that puts them in the public eye, for that matter—the kids of celebrities really have to want it for themselves. Because boy are people going to suggest they only got it thanks to Mom and Dad.
“I never assume that anyone is going to actually know who the hell I am,” Colin Hanks said on the Oct. 30 episode of Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend. “And, quite frankly, if they do, they probably don’t even remember my name. I’m just someone else’s attachment, like, ‘Oh, you’re so-and-so’s son, OK.'”
“So-and-so,” in this case, is two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks. “This is one thing I will sort of credit the old man for,” Colin quipped, remembering how, when he decided to pursue acting as a career, his dad told him, “‘Look, you have to want to do this. If you don’t really want this, then come up with something else. ‘Cause you will be miserable.'”
But making his big-screen debut as “Male Page” in That Thing You Do!, directed by and co-starring his father, had sold Colin on the profession.