Little would shock the fans of Amanda Bynes, the child star of the Nickelodeon TV network in the late Nineties and early Noughties. After all, the promising Hollywood career of the once ‘normal, kind and funny’ young woman has long been derailed by a series of public meltdowns.
But a recent video Amanda, now 39, posted on Instagram will leave fans fearing the worst is yet to come for the former starlet.
Puffy-faced with several rings through her nose and her hair dyed pink and green at the ends, Amanda revealed that she’d begun taking weight-loss drug Ozempic. Her reason was not health-related but a dispiriting attempt to ‘look better in paparazzi pictures’.
‘Oh, I’m going on Ozempic,’ she said. ‘So excited. I’m 173[pounds] now so I hope to get down to like 130, which would be awesome so I look better in paparazzi pictures,’ she said, before adding: ‘I will post about my Ozempic journey of course.’
Wanting to shed a few pounds is hardly uncommon for a Californian celebrity, and she revealed last year that she wanted to go back to her teenage weight of 110 pounds, having gained 20 pounds due to depression. But doing so to please the paparazzi is troubling, especially since she announced in April she was joining the X-rated subscription site OnlyFans. It was, she said, a means to communicate with her fans, and insisted she will not be sharing anything ‘sleazy’.
For Amanda, it seems, her fraught relationship with the camera lens persists.
Like many child stars before her, including Britney Spears and Home Alone actor Macaulay Culkin, she has endured some torrid years since shooting to fame in the Nineties.
Aged 10, she appeared on the Nickelodeon sketch show All That in 1996 and, such was her appeal, producers gave her her own spin-off series The Amanda Show, which aired between 1999 and 2002.

A recent video of Amanda Bynes, now 39, posted on Instagram will leave fans fearing the worst is yet to come for the former starlet

Amanda was a child star of the Nickelodeon TV network in the late Nineties and early Noughties
Fast forward 12 years and the bubbly TV personality was receiving treatment at a psychiatric unit. Following her release in November 2014, she was seen stumbling around Tinseltown with a group of friends, lurching between bars and hotels, several of which turned her away, including The London, a five-star venue on Sunset Boulevard.
Her bizarre and concerning behaviour prompted many to fear for her wellbeing, so when I saw her that month in the Laurel Hardware bar on Santa Monica Boulevard, I felt compelled to ask her if she was OK.
Dressed in a short skirt, white socks and flip flops, Amanda was just leaving after boozing with two friends. Clutching a paper cup, she looked perturbed as she stood outside, her friends – a male and female – talking among themselves as she stood alone, cutting a fragile figure.
Her purple hair already looking washed out just three days after dying, she resembled a lost, little girl – a world apart from her days as a confident young actress. It was impossible not to feel sorry for her.
When I asked how she was doing, I was taken aback when she replied with a question: Would I give her a hug? I happily obliged, hoping that it might make her feel a little better, though the state of her brought tears to my eyes. I asked again how she was, but she claimed she was fine – when she clearly wasn’t.
So I decided to compliment her on her hair, which, incidentally felt like straw and looked utterly uncared for. She said: ‘I know, I love it, right? I’m really happy with it.’
As I tried to enquire further – at the time, her wellbeing had gripped America since she came out of Las Encinas hospital’s psychiatric ward following yet another meltdown – her friends dragged her away. Clearly they had other plans for her and that’s what worried me the most.
She apologised and said she had to go, insisting she was heading home – though it was well documented that she didn’t actually have one.

Amanda pictured with her parents Rick and Lynn Bynes

The star has endured some torrid years since shooting to fame

Coming of age in such a toxic environment will have been a struggle for many starlets but Amanda’s troubles since have been especially concerning, says Katie
I watched as the once-so-talented Amanda shambled over a zebra crossing opposite the bar and walked up the unlit Laurel Avenue towards Sunset Boulevard – the scene of much of her bizarre behaviour.
I recall wondering why nobody was helping this poor, troubled, seriously ill young woman. Where were her parents? Where were the agents who made her famous, or those who benefited financially from her childhood acting roles that won her millions of fans?
My sadness was made all the more poignant when I spoke to someone back then who knew her well. They told me that she was ‘a normal, kind and funny’ young woman who loved nothing more than to work out, watch American football since she dated NFL star, Keith Rivers. In fact, so keen to get into the game, she would pick her friend’s brain about the rules.
Amanda also enjoyed playing video games (Dance Revolution, in particular) and drawing – a lot.

After gaining fame as a Nickelodeon child star and starring in a number of high-profile films, Bynes retired from acting in 2010 (seen in 2011)

Amanda announced in April she was joining the X-rated subscription site OnlyFans. It was, she said, a means to communicate with her fans, and insisted she will not be sharing anything ‘sleazy’
‘She’s an amazing girl,’ said the friend. ‘That’s why those who know her properly are so sad right now. She isn’t stupid, I know what people are thinking but that isn’t the real Amanda, it really isn’t.’
While her parents Rick and Lynn Bynes weren’t with her the night we met, they had placed Amanda under a ‘legal conservatorship’ the year before (which lasted until 2022) – similar to the control to which Britney Spears was subjected.
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When Amanda moved out of her parents’ home in Thousands Oaks, California, not long after, she went off the rails spectacularly. One 2014 incident, in which she tried to steal a hat from Barney’s department store in New York, was especially bizarre. A subsequent report that Amanda was suffering from schizophrenia were denied by her lawyers. Regardless, many have pointed out that a childhood spent in the TV spotlight could only have fanned her mental state.
Last year, a video circulated of a recurring sketch she did for The Amanda Show. Dressed in a swimming costume, the child sat in a hot tub, microphone in hand, interviewing guests. In the water beside was Dan Schneider, the television guru behind her TV success. Fully clothed, his black shirt was sodden. The image of a young girl and a grown man in a bubbling pool was incongruous then, but downright disturbing now.
Schneider is thought to have discovered Amanda when she was performing at the Los Angeles Laugh Factory comedy club. While no evidence of sexual relations was presented involving the executive, observers at the time recalled he and Amanda were ‘very close’ and he departed from Nickelodeon in 2018.
Last year, Schneider apologised for his ’embarrassing’ on-set behaviour at the children’s channel after an investigation found that he was verbally abusive to staff members.
Coming of age in such a toxic environment will have been a struggle for many starlets but Amanda’s troubles since have been especially concerning. And I worry what is coming next.