Britney Spears isn’t the only star in Hollywood to chafe under the confines of a conservatorship. Actress and Nickelodeon child star Amanda Bynes recently filed to end her’s after nearly nine years.
According to Page Six, the filing states that she “desires to live free of any constraint” going forward.
Bynes has progressed forward since her very public mental meltdown across social media. She graduated from the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, and she got engaged to Paul Michael in 2020, who she met at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. However, under the rules of the conservatorship, she cannot marry him without permission from her mother.
A temporary conservatorship was first filed in 2013 after she set a fire in a stranger’s driveway and was placed on a psychiatric hold. In 2014, Amanda’s mother, Lynn Bynes, was named conservator of her healthcare and personal affairs. Subsequently that same year, Bynes tweeted about her diagnosis of bipolar disorder and said that she also had used drugs.
She explained the dark and confusing time she had endured in 2018 to Paper magazine.
“I just had no purpose in life,” she said. “I’d been working my whole life and [now] I was doing nothing. I had a lot of time on my hands, and I would… literally be stoned all day long. [I was] hanging out with a seedier crowd and I isolated a lot … I got really into my drug usage, and it became a really dark, sad world for me.”
In 2020, she spent two months in treatment where, according to her Instagram, she “Worked on coping skills to help with my social anxiety that caused me to drop out of school months ago.”
However, Us obtained the legal documents ahead of Bynes’ court filing last September, and reported she would remain under conservatorship. While the judge is happy with her progress, the next report on her health is to be turned in by her mother in January 2023.
“She’s doing great,” Amanda’s attorney, David Esquibias, told Us at the time. “Everyone would love to see Amanda not under a conservatorship. The timing is not right at the moment, so she’s working toward that direction.”
Bynes and Spears are far from the only Hollywood stars and performers to be put under a conservatorship. You might remember Lindsay Lohan’s father attempted to get her under a Britney-style conservatorship, but failed. In 2015, Joni Mitchell suffered a devastating aneurysm and needed a conservator to handle her financial affairs during a long recovery. Actor Mickey Rooney’s 8th wife and her son had stolen $400,000 from him and withheld medication. The judge granted a conservatorship to protect him in 2011.
This is not the first time Bynes has made a bid for her freedom. She tried to have the conservatorship dissolved in 2020, but the judge denied her request.
Stay on top of the latest in L.A. food and culture. Sign up for our newsletters today.
