Top 10 Surprising Rules Disney Stars MUST Follow

Well…sort of. While the stars themselves are perfectly free to smoke in their personal lives or in other media, Disney properties are another matter. Although smoking has appeared in Disney media since its early days, the company has more recently taken a harder stance on depicting the harmful practice in its media to avoid being a negative influence on its primarily youthful target audience. To that end, except in very specific circumstances, smoking has been largely absent from Disney properties, including those under its large umbrella, like Marvel or Star Wars.

Young Disney stars have stricter rules to follow than most other child stars and that’s partly because of the brand image of Disney itself. Disney tries to present itself as a wholesome and de facto symbol of childhood, so anything remotely risqué generally has to be avoided. This includes what their young stars can and cannot wear, to the point of quibbling over skirt lengths for onscreen costumes and dictating what the kids can wear to public events. Is it any wonder that so many young Disney stars try to express their sexuality when they get older, given the company’s tough rules?

Social media can feel like an absolute necessity for celebrities these days, whether it’s for easier networking or to keep up with friends and family. And the young stars of Disney are no different. However, given that they’re in the public eye and help represent Disney’s brand, many reportedly have to receive permission before posting things on social platforms as well as take classes on social media and avoiding scandals. The former might seem draconian, since not being able to use social media is like not eating for some people, but there’s a method to this madness. For example, spoilers or other details are less likely to leak through this method if posts by younger stars, who maybe don’t understand secrecy yet, are screened before being published.

Music is in Disney’s lifeblood, and is a prominent part of their success, as evidenced by many of their most popular animated films being musicals. Live action media has followed suit, with acts like the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus getting their start through Disney. While Disney’s push towards music can bring success, it can also cause its young stars to reject that path specifically because they’re encouraged to take it. This is apparently the case of Shia LaBeouf, who felt pressured into music by Disney but avoided it deliberately; taking more serious work upon leaving the company.

Show business is pretty unforgiving when it comes to age and body image, and that is especially true of the young stars of Disney. Maintaining a youthful appearance is particularly important for those Disney actors who are on the cusp of adulthood or if they’re young adults already. For instance, Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers has talked about needing to shave to maintain his youthful appearance for his part on the siblings’ sitcom, where he played a teenager, despite being college-age at the time.

Being interviewed by the media can be intimidating, or so we imagine, and we’d also think that being a kid star for Disney would make the process especially daunting. However, Disney has supposedly instructed its young talent in how to handle questions that are tough, uncomfortable, or just too real. According to Joe Jonas, who spoke with New York magazine’s Vulture in 2013, Disney coached the Jonas brothers to play dumb rather than deal with hard hitting or awkward questions, or else change the subject to something completely irrelevant. So think about that the next time your favorite star seems like an airhead in an interview – they might just be following orders.

If you’re at all familiar with young Disney stars, you’re probably aware that there have been quite a few couples that have formed between them. This isn’t entirely by accident. While Disney can hardly tell its stars who they can or can’t date, they do encourage their teenage and young adult talent to pursue one another. Disney power couples raise both the stars’ profiles and that of the company itself. Sometimes matchmaking can be good marketing. It’s just too bad that these relationships rarely have the kind of staying power that Disney itself does.

The pressures of the public eye are pretty intense, so we hear, but what about the public ear? According to former Disney actress Bella Thorne, she was instructed to speak in interviews and other public settings with a higher voice than her natural speaking one, which is naturally low and, according to Disney, didn’t fit with the “wholesome” vibe they wanted her to project. First of all, that’s a completely false stereotype, and secondly, being told that your voice isn’t Disney’s definition of what’s “good” has gotta suck as a young person. You’re basically being asked to continue acting even when you’re in public.

Disney’s musical inclinations have already been discussed, but they keep as tight a leash on their musical acts as they do on their actors. That includes what they can and cannot put in their songs. According to Joe Jonas, the company censored many of the Jonas Brothers’ songs; keeping anything remotely suggestive of sex or intimacy from appearing in their lyrics. Artists expressing themselves in song is fine with Disney (we can only assume), but not at the cost of the company’s public image.



Before we get to our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions:

Sometimes Can’t Take on Other Non-Disney-Related Projects



Simple Nails



How to Sign Autographs

Disney’s squeaky clean image is definitely all important to them: like a purity ring. And if all our entries thus far haven’t convinced you of that, our final one certainly will. Disney’s contracts are written to protect their brand and they are said to include a morality clause. It essentially states that if a Disney star engages in activity that contradicts either public decency or morality as Disney sees it, they can be let go. While this clause is meant to protect Disney and to discourage stars from risqué or illegal behavior, it can also feel restricting to the ones who have to abide by it; at least if all the scandalous things that former stars have gotten up to after they leave Disney is anything to go by.