Parenting & Family Quote by Tommy Rettig

There is a particular kind of career purgatory baked into Rettig's complaint: you can age, you can grow, you can even do good work, and the public will still keep you pinned under glass like a collectible. "Still thought of" is doing the heavy lifting here. It frames identity as something decided by other people, less a self than a consensus. The phrase lands with the quiet frustration of someone realizing that adulthood is not a biological milestone but a branding problem.

Rettig came up in the era when Hollywood and early television manufactured innocence with industrial efficiency. A "kid actor" wasn't just a job description; it was a product category audiences trusted and studios could package. Once you become a symbol of childhood, you stop being allowed to be complicated. Your face carries a before-and-after timeline that fans refuse to update, because updating it forces them to confront their own passing time. Nostalgia is comforting partly because it freezes everyone in place.

The subtext is also about labor and legitimacy. Being in your mid-twenties should confer professional credibility, but celebrity logic runs on first impressions and reruns. Casting directors, journalists, even strangers on the street treat your earliest role as your permanent essence. Rettig isn't merely lamenting typecasting; he's pointing at the asymmetry of fame: the audience gets a forever-you, while you have to live the changing, ordinary years in real time.