Everyone familiar with the business knows the cliched stories of child actors. They attain fame and notoriety early on in life, but things don't necessarily stay quite so happy in adulthood. It's a trope, but there's truth to the phenomenon, and it appears that one of the most iconically evil silver screen kids of all time is now making headlines for some less than savory reasons. Harvey Spencer Stephens -- the child actor best known for playing Damien Thorn in Richard Donner's The Omen -- is officially going to jail after a recent road rage incident, and the date of his sentencing could not have been more ironic.
A recent report from The Guardian has confirmed that Harvey Spencer Stephens has officially been sentenced for assault following a road rage incident last year. The incident in question occurred on August 21, 2016. According to the report, Stephens cut off two bikers on the side of the road and violently attacked them following an intense confrontation. One of the cyclists was knocked unconscious during the encounter, and Stephen was subsequently charged with two counts of Actual Bodily Harm, as well as one charge of criminal damage. During the sentencing process, Stephens received 12 months in jail for the ABH charges, as well as two months for the criminal damage charge.
We would be remiss for not pointing out some serious irony in this story. Harvey Spencer Stephens -- the actor known for playing the most iconic and demonic child ever to grace the silver screen -- received his sentenced on Friday the 13th. You can't make that stuff up.
People simply have a nasty habit of getting hurt around Stephens whenever cycles are involved, don't they? It's hard not to look at this story and think about one particularly notable scene from The Omen.
Harvey Spencer Stephens' status as an icon within the horror genre has been firmly established over the course of the last four decades. He perfected the art of the "creepy kid" scare -- a trope that has persisted for years -- and he has set the standard for evil children on the silver screen. Many other child actors tried to follow in his footsteps over the years (especially his successors within The Omen franchise), but nobody has ever come close to matching the sheer terror that he induced back in 1976.
