9 Celebrities Who Emancipated Themselves — See These Freedom Fighters! (PHOTOS)

Actress Michelle Williams also became emancipated from her parents to avoid child labor work laws, moving on her own from San Diego to L.A. at age 15 after making the legal split. “There was a notion that it makes you more appealing because you don’t have to pay for a teacher or guardian on set, and you can work the same number of hours as an adult,” she explained to NPR. “It got me Dawson's Creek. All the other kids were 18, and I was 16 when I got the show. And I don’t think I would have been hired had I been a minor.”

However, there was also some parental friction involved. “It was kind of a break [from them],” she explained to Interview magazine of her decision to leave her mother and father and set out on her own at such a young age. “It didn’t last too terribly long, thank goodness, before I got Dawson’s Creek and moved to North Carolina. So I had about a year in Los Angeles solo.”