Ever since Brian De Palma unleashed his adaptation of Carrie back in 1976, Stephen King’s gift for writing out-of-the-ordinary child characters has been a boon to the screenwriters, directors and child actors who have brought the novelist’s young creations to life on screen.

From rebellious outsiders to supernaturally gifted teens, from the impressionable to the misunderstood or neglected, King’s fictional kids are horrific, pitiable, relatable and repulsive in equal measure. They might be conduits for supernatural forces, tragic victims of some unspeakable evil or, from time to time, simply everyday kids navigating treacherous circumstances. And they are just as likely to meet, or indeed cause, a bloody demise as his adult creations.

Be they the eyes and ears of the viewer through monstrous scenarios, uneasy reflections of our darker, youthful impulses, or reminders that life goes hand in hand with death, King’s kids are definitely not alright.

Here are 10 of the most memorable, via BFI:

1. Carrie White – Carrie (1976)


The first of Stephen King’s youthful creations remains his most iconic, thanks initially to the author himself and then to leading lady Sissy Spacek in Brian De Palma’s influential and memorably bloody adaptation. A blank canvas onto which her bullying peers and watching viewers project all manner of emotions and feelings, telekinetic teen Carrie White is a deeply unsettling, contradictory figure. Culminating in the nightmarish scene at the high-school prom, her dreadful, explosive and doomed coming of age was unlike any other seen before.





David Soul and James Mason may have been the star names in Tobe Hooper’s take on King’s second novel, Salem’s Lot, but it was youngsters Ronnie Scribner and Brad Savage who played the adaptation’s best remembered characters. As Ralphie and Danny Glick respectively, Scribner and Savage played the ill-feted kid brothers who succumb to vampirism. Ralphie’s unbearably creepy window hovering scenes and Danny’s jump-scare return from the grave ensured these supporting characters scarred a generation for life.


3. Danny Torrance – The Shining (1980)


It’s no fun being Danny Torrance in Stanley Kubrick’s idiosyncratic adaptation of King’s psychological horror novel, The Shining. Cooped up in the Overlook Hotel and blessed/cursed with psychic powers, Danny is plagued by horrifying visions of the establishment’s past. A lonely and troubled child, Danny overcomes emotional, mental and physical obstacles to break free of both the Overlook and his violently deranged father, Jack (Jack Nicholson). In a challenging, pivotal role, first-time child actor Danny Lloyd did an accomplished job of portraying the young psychic.


4. The Grady Sisters – The Shining (1980)


As tragic as they are terrifying, the spectral Grady sisters (played by twins Louise and Lisa Burns) may have only commanded the briefest of screen time in Kubrick’s big screen version of The Shining, but their impact on audiences was huge. Wandering the corridors of the Overlook Hotel and beckoning the petrified Danny to play with them “forever and ever and ever”, these victims of filicide dressed in matching ice blue baby-doll dresses deserve their place in horror film history.


5. Charlene ‘Charlie’ McGee – Firestarter (1984)


One of the less successful King adaptations, artistically and financially, Mark L. Lester’s take on Firestarter did at least give the then young and precocious Drew Barrymore an eye-catching early role. Barrymore’s angelic, cute-as-a-button demeanor beautifully contrasted with the vast pyrokinetic powers her character possessed. Like her spiritual sibling Carrie White before her, Charlie McGee would eventually unleash a wave of supernatural destruction on those around her. Unlike Carrie, however, Charlie would survive the fiery devastation she brought forth.


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