Where are the child stars from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory now?

Here’s the one piece of completely unwanted information that will make you feel horribly old for a second – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is 15 years old. While Jonny Depp is busy having his private life very publicly dissected and Helena Bonham Carter is still a familiar face on cinema screens, it seems that not a lot has been heard from the child stars of the film in a while. Like, when was the last time you saw Veruca Salt in a film?

As it turns out, the actors have done a LOT of ageing in those 15 years and all sit comfortably into their late twenties. So, let’s take a look at where they are now.

Freddie Highmore as Charlie Bucket

Freddie actually smashed it playing Charlie Bucket, and is rumoured to have been personally recommended by Johnny Depp himself after they’d worked on previous projects together. He is now 28 and by far the most successful film star of all of the visitors to the chocolate factory, having appeared in multiple TV shows and films.

In 2017 he began producing and starring as Shaun Murphy in The Good Doctor, and was even nominated for a Golden Globe Award for best actor for it. He also appeared as the main character in Bates Motel so, yeah, he’s done some pretty big stuff since playing Charlie Bucket.

Highmore appears to have completely cleansed all of his social media, with his Instagram showing that he has over 600k followers and a blue tick, but no posts and a bio that reads: “Freddie is not currently active on this or any other social media platform.”

So, no juicy personal details other than he’s still big in the acting game. Sorry.

AnnaSophia Robb as Violet Beauregard

AnnaSophia Robb played the aloof champion girl who was pushed by her mum to be the best in every field including martial arts, chewing gum and turning into a ginormous blueberry.

She has done plenty of acting work since and ended up studying for four years at New York University between 2014 and 2018. From her Instagram, it looks like she has lost the bob and now goes for a shorter pixie cut which really suits.

She is very vocal about her support for various causes on social media, and has amassed over one million followers on Instagram which is far more than her other costars.

Julia Winter as Veruca Salt

Veruca Salt was a massive pain in the arse from the start, demanding that her pushover dad got her anything and everything she wanted, including the very ticket that got her the tour around the factory! She should’ve had a parent swap with Violet.

You would be forgiven for thinking that you haven’t seen her in anything since, and that’s because… you haven’t. That’s right, her last public appearance was rather weirdly as a celebrity guest on Dick and Dom in da Bungalow in 2006. So, what’s she actually doing now?

In 2016, The Sun wrote that she was training to become a doctor as she had completely stepped out of the spotlight – what would her character Veruca think! She seems to have followed Charlie Bucket with the whole no social media thing, so as such we genuinely can’t provide you with a reliable image of what she looks like currently.

Philip Wiegratz as Augustus Gloop

You know Augustus Gloop, don’t you? The tubby boy that couldn’t stop eating and eating to the point that he ended up falling in a river full of chocolate because he was so greedy. Apparently one of the casting people saw him and just knew then and there that he would fit the role of a gluttonous and morbidly obese child – not sure if that’s a compliment or not.

Well, the role was played by Philip Wiegratz, whose first film role was as gloopy Gloop. He had to wear a fatsuit instead of having to put on weight for the role, which comes as a bit of a surprise to say the least.

Philip has been in almost exclusively German films since appearing in the chocolate factory, with his last credit on Wikipedia being from 2013. It seems from his Facebook page that he is now a software development engineer and dabbles in generally computery bits, so no more acting appearances for us.

Jordan Fry as Mike Teavee

Square-eyed geek Mike Teavee didn’t seem very thrilled at the prospect of visiting William Wonka in the factory, instead just tapping away on his controller during the press briefing, but things have come a long was since then, and he’s blossomed into a full-on skater dude.

The man behind the character is 27-year-old Jordan Fry. His last acting credit was from 2017, and the only other notable project he’s been part of is in the animated Disney film Meet the Robinsons. He’s fairly active on Instagram posting silly stories with his mates, and generally seems like a completely ordinary bloke.

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