At 20, A Lifetime of Experience

CHICAGO —  In an age in which children, like sports cars, seem to go from 0 to 60 in 2.9 seconds, Rachel Miner is on overdrive.

The star of the current Goodman Theater production “Blue Surge” as well as the controversial new movie “Bully,” Miner, 20, has done many things in a hurry. She has been a professional actress since she was 9, including an eight-year stint on the daytime serial “Guiding Light”; she married former child star Macaulay Culkin at 17, only to separate two years later; and in “Blue Surge” and “Bully,” she portrays a prostitute and a sexually promiscuous murderer, respectively.

The contradictions between her images in life and art make her story singularly compelling, and the fact that she’s in Chicago as she becomes a focal point of passionate debate in the entertainment world is an unusual scenario for her and the city. Indeed, though her name has not yet been on the public radar, that may be about to change with “Bully.”

“I always thought of myself as an adult. My teen years were when I was, like, 6,” said Miner, who is living in downtown Chicago through Aug. 5, when “Blue Surge” is scheduled to conclude its run, whereupon she will return to New York. “My life was destined to be out of the ordinary. I never crawled. I started walking when I was 8 months old.”

Tucked into a chair in the Goodman lobby, Miner displayed a serenity that contrasted wildly with the blur and racket outside. The petite young woman with the luminously pale skin and intense expression is almost ethereally calm, radiating a confidence and self-possession that are the antithesis of the confused, troubled teens she plays in “Blue Surge” and “Bully.”

Miner, who tilts her head and speaks in slow, emphatic, carefully modulated sentences, paused and reflected when asked if she felt she had lost her childhood.

“I think I lost and gained,” she said. “I can’t have one without the other--I can’t have everything I’ve had and have had a perfect childhood. And you can’t go back.”

In Chicago, though, she can go virtually anywhere else. Unlike her life with Culkin in New York, where the couple couldn’t leave their apartment without attracting a phalanx of nosy fans and pushy tabloid photographers, life in Chicago has been blissfully simple, Miner said. Although her name and face have been--by virtue of her association with Culkin--splashed across every major tabloid and infotainment TV show, she can stroll along Chicago’s lakefront and across crowded downtown streets without turning a head or evoking a single shriek of recognition, she said.

Miner spends her time working on the show and hanging out with cast members, she added. On days off, she flies to New York to help promote “Bully,” which has drawn raves and brickbats in almost equal measure for its uncompromising portrait of teen killers. Appearing in a major theatrical production and major film at the same moment is a happy coincidence, Miner said; release dates for movies are always volatile.

“Bully,” based on a real-life case in Hollywood, Fla., in which a group of teens murdered a classmate, includes so much graphic violence, sexuality and language that it arrived unrated at the only Chicago venue that booked it. In published interviews, director Larry Clark said he did not submit the film to the Motion Picture Assn. of America because he was told its content surpassed the bounds of an R rating and he did not want an NC-17, the contemporary equivalent of an X.

‘The Disappearance of Childhood’

Miner’s life and accelerated career arc both clarify and cloud the picture of childhood’s increasing imperilment in the modern age, a trend dubbed “the disappearance of childhood” by author and New York University professor Neil Postman. At younger and younger ages, children are exposed to adult content in movies and TV shows and, in Miner’s case and many others, participate in the making of them. Clothing catalogs such as Abercrombie & Fitch employ models in suggestive poses, models who often appear to have scarcely passed the threshold of adolescence. The scanty and sexually suggestive garb of teen idols such as Britney Spears is widely emulated by young girls. Video games marketed to children feature increasingly graphic violence and an emphasis on sexuality.

The idea of childhood as a distinct, protected realm--which, as Postman points out, is less than two centuries old--may be slipping away, he said.

“More and more, you have children doing activities done by adults,” Postman said. “Everywhere you look, the behavior, language, attitudes and desires--even the physical appearance--of adults and children are becoming increasingly indistinguishable.”

Says Miner: “I grew up around adults and started working so young I thought I was an adult. It might be true that kids today grow up too soon, but I think it would take too much reworking of society to make that not true. It’s better to be honest and cope with it. We don’t live in an ideal world.”

Her parents, Miner said, did not encourage her to pursue acting. “I always knew I wanted to do it. I was 2 when I started asking my parents if I could act.”

Miner’s Parents Knew Hardships She Faced

It was a natural request: Her father is an acting teacher and TV director who worked for many years on “One Life to Live,” and her mother is a writer. “But they were really scared for me.” They knew the hardships of an actor’s life, Miner added. Still, when they realized she was serious, they relented.

At 8, Miner began working with an acting coach; at 9, she was cast in “Guiding Light.” In 1990, she appeared in the Woody Allen film “Alice,” and in 1998 she was cast as Margo Frank in the critically acclaimed Broadway revival of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” which starred Natalie Portman.

Miner attended the Professional Children’s School, a secondary school in New York for actors that accommodates irregular schedules. It was there she met Culkin, a fellow pupil.

Miner did not graduate, a decision she called “stupid.” She intends to obtain a GED and may go to college. “But I’ve learned in life that there are so many wonderful opportunities to learn things. I just keep being taken on these different journeys.”

One of those journeys was her June 1998 marriage to Culkin at a ceremony in New Preston. Conn. Their separation in August 2000 was “very hard,” said Miner, who offered few details of the relationship. “But it’s hard for anybody, no matter what your age is. It’s one of the hardest things to cope with and you just cope with it the best you can. That’s what life is--trying to do your best.”