A few years ago, Cole revealed on Tumblr that his mother put him and Dylan into acting when they were just 8 months old. "I never made the decision to join the arts or acting specifically. And so it was never really my passion," Cole said in a since-deleted audio clip on Tumblr, per Insider.
While their mother reportedly pushed the two into acting early on due to financial reasons, Cole told "Call Her Daddy" that his father apparently wasn't into the idea initially. "[My father] desperately wanted us to be normal kids, and my mother wanted us to be a bit more of a caricature of two normal kids," he said.
In a March 13 interview on podcast "The Diary of a CEO," Cole described his mother as "the tortured artist type" who "struggled" to find her "place in the world." Apart from the fact that his and Dylan's acting jobs helped sustain the family, Cole thinks another reason his mother was so adamant they go into acting is that it helped fulfill an old dream of hers. "I think it satisfied some sort of narcissism she probably had in order to be recognized as this sort of artistic success," he said. "But as time went on, I think the entertainment industry just sort of broke her."
Cole alleged Melanie wasn't responsible with her kids' early acting money and she eventually lost custody of him and Dylan. "When my father was given forced custody, we had pretty much lost everything from the youngest parts of our career. That would be 'Friends' and 'Big Daddy,'" he said on "Call Her Daddy."
Cole became estranged from his mother in adulthood due to everything she put him and Dylan through. "In truth, she lost her mind," he said. "I think it was the consequence of some weird alchemy of addiction and mental instability, and it's probably the greatest wound in my life and also the greatest driving force for my continuing in this industry."
In a March 2020 interview with the New York Daily News, Dylan said that his personal issues at home impacted his school life. "I was not a good kid. And I was always in trouble," he said. "And I was dealing with a lot of stuff at home that I was bringing to school and taking out on other people." However, Dylan said that once he was in a "nurturing environment," he "became a much better person."
