Shia LaBeouf's Even Stevens co-star Christy Carlson Romano claims she was paid only half his salary

Christy Carlson Romano has claimed she was paid a mere half of what her co-star Shia LaBeouf got on the Disney Channel sitcom Even Stevens.

The pair shot to fame as child actors on the series, which ran from 2000 through 2003 and featured them as an older sister and younger brother, Ren and Louis.

Romano, who was 16 years old when the show premiered, was prominently featured beside LaBeouf in the promotional posters for the project.

Nevertheless, she has now maintained on Instagram that despite their being 'co-leads' with the 'same screen time,' LaBeouf earned twice her salary.

She affixed a letter her mother Sharon purportedly wrote to her agent in September 2000, alleging Romano made $6,000 an episode while LaBeouf was paid $12,000.

In her Instagram caption, Romano clarified that she felt LaBeouf 'earned every dollar' of his wage, but noted her own family was 'deeply in debt' at the time.

The Daily Mail has contacted Disney for comment. 

'By then, my paycheck was keeping us afloat. My mom was fighting for me, and she was also fighting for a household that depended on a teenage girl,' she wrote.

'It took me years to understand I could love her for advocating for me and still wish I had gotten to just be a kid,' the former child star confessed.

Sharon's letter to her daughter's agent contained a five-point set of requests, the first of which was pay parity between Romano and LaBeouf.

Legally, 30 percent of Romano's salary had to be stored in what was known as a Coogan Account where it was untouchable by her or her parents until she turned 18.

The accounts were named for Silent Era child star Jackie Coogan, who discovered upon reaching adulthood that his mother and stepfather had frittered away the fortune he had earned working with the likes of Charlie Chaplin. 

'With 30 percent going into trust, we can't make it here financially,' Sharon insisted in her letter. 'This show also holds her up from other work that pays more.'

Sharon also complained that Romano's lines were being 'lessened' and that 'every show' was told from the 'point of view' of LaBeouf's character Louis.

Further, Sharon asked that Romano be given a separate tutor, as she was a junior in high school while her underage co-stars were freshmen.

Her fourth point was to inform the agent that an apparently unscheduled eight-week hiatus Even Stevens took had 'killed us financially.'

Sharing that her family were 'so far in debt,' Sharon requested that her daughter be 'paid for any unscheduled hiatus, especially over a week in future.' 

Her fifth and final ask was for Romano to be cast in Disney Channel movies – an ambition that was realized in 2002 with Cadet Kelly, in which she co-starred with the network's breakout Lizzie McGuire star Hilary Duff. 

In her Instagram caption accompanying the note, Romano wrote: 'While writing my memoir, I dug through thousands of old photos and letters and found this.'

Her autobiography Once Upon a Trainwreck: The Rise and Fall of a Child Star was published October 6 and also contains the Even Stevens pay gap allegation. 

'Shia earned every dollar, and this book is not about him or any other famous name you might recognize,' she wrote in her Instagram post.

'They were part of my story. They were never the story. The story is a girl who grew up too fast, and a business that decided she was worth half. If you grew up taking care of the people who were supposed to take care of you, I wrote this book for you.'