The rise and fall of 2000s teen star Amanda Bynes

The story of Amanda Bynes is a tragic one. After much success as a teen actress, she disappeared from view by the time she was 25. Or, that is, she disappeared from acting work, because the news about her mental health problems, arrests, and conservatorship kept coming in. Read all about the rise and fall of Amanda Bynes.

In December 2023, Amanda Bynes reappeared in the spotlight with a new look after her recent eyelid surgery. The former teen star, now 37 years old, shared her new look in a video on Instagram.

Image: still from @amandaamandaamanda1986 / Instagram

"I was never open about this before, but I actually had blepharoplasty surgery on the skinfolds and the corner of my eyes," Bynes told her followers. In the video, we could see that she also dyed her hair and eyebrows. Surgically removing the skinfolds, she said, "was one of the best things I could’ve ever done for my self-confidence..."

Image: still from @amandaamandaamanda1986 / Instagram

With her new look came a new job! Amanda Bynes, who had been looking for a vocation since her departure from acting, recently debuted as a podcaster on Spotify. Her show is called 'Amanda Bynes and Paul Sieminski: The Podcast'.

Picture: @AmandaBynesPaulSieminski / YouTube

However, it is not a podcast to talk about herself. Amanda Bynes wants to focus on, and learn from, others. In her first episode, she interviewed a Los Angeles tattoo artist Dahlia Moth.

Photo: @amandaamandaamanda1986 / Instagram

Amanda Bynes appeared in the news several times in recent years, especially concerning her mental health problems. As TMZ reported in 2022, she was held in a psychiatric ward for almost a month after people found her walking around Los Angeles without clothes on.

The 2000s teen star made the news in March 2022, when she was spotted roaming the streets of Los Angeles without clothes on. According to TMZ, Amanda stopped a car at some point and told the driver she was coming out of a psychotic episode.

According to reports obtained by the New York Post, Amanda Bynes had been "wandering the streets for days" before she called the police on herself. A TikTok video obtained by the Post and other media shows a girl supporting the teen star as they are walking in an LA street.

Image: @KaitlynHotFox / TikTok

Another clue about the duration of her relapse was the fact that Bynes' car was towed from a parking spot "about 40 miles from her home and roughly 25 miles from downtown Los Angeles where she was found," the New York Post states. Authorities assume that she took public transport or hitchhiked to the place where she eventually wound up.

Photo: @rlamandabynes / Instagram

Finally, she was taken to a police station and from there transferred to a psychiatric facility where she was held for nearly a month. After that period, the former teen star was no longer considered a danger to herself or society. She could move on with her life.

Amanda Bynes has gone through an incredible rise and fall throughout the 37 years of her life. She became immensely popular in the 2000s. Then, she spiraled out of control and had to deal with a 9-year-long conservatorship under the guidance of her parents.

Amanda's transformation throughout the years has been impressive and, at times, tragic. Have a further look to remember her acting career and the story of her downfall.

Amanda Laura Bynes was born in Thousand Oaks, California on April 3, 1986. Her father is a dentist (now retired) and her mother is a dental assistant and office manager.

Image: movie still from 'What a Girl Wants'

The Californian girl began acting in TV commercials at the age of seven. While attending a comedy camp at the Los Angeles Laugh Factory, she was discovered by a Nickelodeon producer who suggested she audition for a comedy series.

At age ten she began working on the sketch comedy series 'All That.' This was her acting debut in 1996.

In 1999 she got her own variety show, based on the comedy characters from 'All That'. Thanks to this show, Amanda won the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Award for Favorite TV Actress every year the show aired.

Between 2002 and 2006 the young actress participated in several successful teen movies. In 'Big Fat Liar,' she shared the screen with another actor who would later withdraw from filmmaking: Frankie Muniz.

Bynes plays an American teenager who travels to London to look for her lost father. As it turns out, he's a very wealthy English aristocrat (played by Colin Firth) who doesn't know of her existence.

Or do you remember this one? Bynes plays a girl who wants to join her school's football team but they don't allow girls. So what does she do? She disguises herself as a boy in order to play with the team. However, she falls in love with teammate Duke, who's played by a young and little-known Channing Tatum.

A well-known performance of Amanda Bynes was her role in the popular Nickelodeon series 'What I Like About You' from 2002 to 2006. She played Holly Tyler, a teenager who is forced to move in with her older sister in New York City. Her sister is played by Jennie Garth, a famous actress thanks to 'Beverly Hills, 90210.'

Besides playing with the greatest of Hollywood, the young actress was nominated for several awards herself. She got nominations for the Teen Choice Awards in the category of Choice TV Actress - Comedy (2003-2005), and she won the Kid's Choice Award a few times in the category of Favorite Movie Actress.

Among her last works in film, 'Hairspray' (2007) stands out because she shared the screen with many big stars: John Travolta, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken, James Marsden, Queen Latifah, and Zac Efron. The movie was received very well, both by the public and by the critics.

In 'Easy A' (2010), Bynes plays the mean girl, Marianne, in a star cast with Emma Stone, Penn Badgley, Lisa Kudrow, and Stanley Tucci. Although it seems that she was reaching a high point in her career, this movie was, in fact, her last one.

In 2010, through a tweet from her official account (which she later deleted), Bynes announced that she was probably retiring from the world of acting.

According to Entertainment Weekly, she posted on June 19, 2010: "Being an actress isn’t as fun as it may seem." The tweet was later removed.

In a series of similar tweets she said: "If I don’t love something anymore, I stop doing it. I don't love acting anymore, so I've stopped doing it. I know 24 is a young age to retire, but you heard it here first."

After her retirement from acting, things went downhill for Amanda Bynes. Page Six reports that she was arrested in 2012 for driving under influence. It wasn't just a routine traffic stop: she had alarmed the police after crashing into a sheriff's deputy's car with her BMW in West Hollywood.

It would not be the last traffic accident either. In the same year, Bynes was arrested two more times for two hit-and-runs.

In 2013 she was arrested for reckless endangerment and marijuana possession after she'd been found smoking in the lobby of her Times Square apartment. When agents entered her apartment on the 36th floor, she threw a bong out the window, which is a very dangerous thing to do. Yet, the case was dismissed in 2014.

Again in 2013, she was arrested for starting a fire in a Thousand Oaks neighbor's driveway. At this point, Bynes was committed involuntarily to a 72-hour mental-health evaluation hold. Her parents also requested a temporary conservatorship for the management of her financial affairs.

In 2014, Amanda Bynes returned to a psychiatric hold because she had started posting a series of tweets alleging abuse by her father. She also accused him of putting a chip in her brain. ET Online and Hollywood Reporter took note of the tweets at the time. Later, they were removed from Bynes' account.

Still, Amanda Bynes kept using Twitter to share her personal troubles with the world. She announced in 2014 that she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. According to E! News, she tweeted that she was "seeing my psychologist and psychiatrist weekly so I’m fine."

Due to this series of unfortunate events, Amanda Bynes' parents were granted permanent conservatorship over her affairs in October 2014. According to People magazine, her strange behavior also included an attempt to shoplift at Barney's in New York.

People magazine had obtained legal documents of the case and noted that Amanda had been spending considerable amounts of money from her savings account at jewelry stores such as Cartier. She also bought expensive gifts for strangers.

As reported by People, Amanda Bynes' net worth was valued at $5 million in 2014. Unlike Britney Spears's case, Amanda's mother Lynn transferred part of the authority to medical professionals and a money manager while maintaining legal authority over her daughter.

In 2017, Bynes' mother Lynn petitioned the court to put her daughter back in full control of her own finances. She told the judge that Amanda was capable of handling her money. What remained was a medical conservatorship with which Lynn monitored her daughter's mental health, Elle Magazine reported.

It was a different kind of conservatorship from that of Britney Spears because Amanda's parents were much less controlling of her life. In March 2022, after 9 years, the conservatorship came to a complete end. Page Six reported in February 2022 that Amanda had petitioned for the termination, claiming that her health had improved, and her mother had supported the petition in court.

Whether she was under conservatorship or not, Amanda Bynes would no longer work in showbiz. Page Six reported that in 2014 she enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising. She would graduate in 2019.

It was actually something she had wanted to do for a long time. On 'The Howie Mandel Show' in 1999, when she was just 12 years old, Bynes had already said: "I want to be, like, a fashion designer - I love to draw."

Shortly after the conservatorship ended, in March 2022, Amanda Bynes announced on her Instagram account that she was enrolling in a Cosmetology School to become a manicurist.

It's hard to tell what's next for Amanda Bynes. Will she go full-time with her podcast or will she open a nail salon?