Child Stars Try to Make It Big...Again

Acting was never Anna's ultimate career goal, so she took the opportunity to find a new path. She enrolled in her dream school, the University of Chicago, and upon graduation, moved to New York to work for the Zagat's restaurant guide books.

But despite her best efforts to move on, acting always loomed in the back of her mind.

"I was desperate for answers, for someone to tell me what to do with my life," Anna said. "I got on the phone with my then-boyfriend and now-husband crying telling him 'What would you say if i just chucked it all and went back into show business and just gave it the good old college try again?'''

In recent months, Anna has booked guest spots on television staples like "Law & Order" and "30 Rock." She has also been cast in two movies which will be released in theaters next spring.

But she doesn't consider this wave of success to be her big comeback.

"I've been doing this for five years now. And so my official comeback would have been my first play out of training," Anna said. "Four years ago acting in children's theater and getting splinters in my butt because you're on some unfinished stage -- that was paying some dues."

Getting ahead in Hollywood is not easy, but Anna thinks her experience as a child star gives her a mental edge over the competition.

"All of the fame addiction, all of the strange glitzy and very shallow aspects of this business, I don't have to buy into it anymore," she said. "Because I did that. It didn't work and I shed it, I didn't like it. And now I know what I'm in it for."

Another comeback kid, "Jerry Maguire" breakout star Jonathan Lipnicki, said he fears that despite a successful career as a child star, he will forever be remembered by a single line from the movie: "The human head weighs 8 pounds."

"I don't want to be remembered for one thing, one line. I don't want to be a joke. I don't want to do commercials saying my line. I just, i just want to be an actor," he said.

He took time off to be a regular kid, playing on his high school's water polo team and working as a summer camp counselor. But now that he's turned 18, he said he is ready to make acting his full-time job and has even started a production company with his mother to produce his own projects.