Christy Carlson Romano says she received half the pay of Shia LaBeouf while the two actors played co-leads on Disney’s Even Stevens.
Romano, who portrayed Ren Stevens opposite LaBeouf’s Louis Stevens, shared the account while promoting her memoir, Once Upon a Trainwreck: The Fall and Rise of a Child Star. The book was released Oct. 6, and Romano posted an excerpt from its story to Instagram a few days later.
“I was a kid and the female lead on Even Stevens,” Romano wrote. “I was paid half of what Shia was paid; we were co-leads and had the same screen time.”
The actress said she revisited thousands of photographs and letters while working on the memoir. Among the material she found was a letter that her mother, Sharon, sent to Romano’s agent in 2000. Romano’s Instagram post included an image of that letter as well as a throwback photograph of Romano, LaBeouf and her mother.
A family depending on a teenage star
According to Romano, her mother used the letter to seek equal compensation and disclose the family’s financial difficulties.
“My mom wrote it to my agent in 2000, asking for equal pay and admitting we were deep in debt,” Romano wrote. “By then, my paycheck was keeping us afloat. My mom was fighting for me, and she was also fighting for a household that depended on a teenage girl.”
Romano’s reflection goes beyond the size of her paycheck. She described having complicated feelings about being both a working child and a major source of financial support for her household.
“It took me years to understand I could love her for advocating for me and still wish I had gotten to just be a kid,” she said.
Romano also made clear that she does not blame LaBeouf for the disparity she described. “Shia earned every dollar,” she wrote, adding that the memoir is not about him or the other recognizable people who crossed her path.
Instead, she framed the experience as part of a larger personal account about growing up under adult pressures. “They were part of my story. They were never the story,” Romano wrote. “The story is a girl who grew up too fast, and a business that decided she was worth half.”
She dedicated that message to readers with similar childhood experiences, writing, “If you grew up taking care of the people who were supposed to take care of you, I wrote this book for you.”
Revisiting Even Stevens
Even Stevens ran for three seasons from 2000 to 2003. The family sitcom focused on the contrasting personalities and sibling rivalry of Ren and Louis, the two younger Stevens children, who lived in suburban Sacramento, California.
Romano played the older sister, while LaBeouf portrayed her younger brother. The cast also included Tom Virtue, Donna Pescow, A.J. Trauth and Nick Spano.
The pay claim is one of the experiences Romano addresses in Once Upon a Trainwreck. According to the memoir’s official description, the book examines what childhood fame cost her, the ideas she later had to reconsider and her continuing effort to find her way back to herself.
ShowBiz Take
Romano’s disclosure matters because it puts a concrete figure on the imbalance she says existed between two young performers presented as co-leads with equal screen time. Her mother’s 2000 letter also adds personal context to the negotiations: Romano says her income was not simply a child actor’s earnings but money supporting a family in debt.
Just as significant is the distinction Romano draws between her co-star and the system setting their compensation. By emphasizing that LaBeouf deserved his salary, she keeps the focus on what she says she was denied rather than casting his success as the problem.
The result is a story about more than a television paycheck. In Romano’s telling, the unequal compensation, her family’s financial dependence and the loss of an ordinary childhood were intertwined — making the Even Stevens disparity one piece of the broader reckoning at the center of her memoir.