# Can't stop nested movie clips

**URL:** <https://forum.kirupa.com/t/cant-stop-nested-movie-clips/239204>\
**Category:** Uncategorized\
**Created:** [September 19, 2007, 3:29pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/cant-stop-nested-movie-clips/239204 "2007-09-19T15:29:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![w3artiste](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/97f17d/32.png) [@w3artiste](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/w3artiste)\
**Post date:** [September 19, 2007, 3:29pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/cant-stop-nested-movie-clips/239204/1 "2007-09-19T15:29:04Z")

</div>

I’m a AS3 newbie and I’m having trouble understanding how to access nested movie clips. I want to stop 3 movies, 1 parent and 2 child movies nested inside it. I can stop the parent but I can’t access the child movies with any success. Here’s what i’ve tried…

this.contentMC.stop(); //this works  
this.contentMC.avatarMC.stop();//this generates error below  
this.contentMC.avatarMC.headMC.stop();();//this generates error below

Error #1009: Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference.

I also tried using MovieClip()

this.contentMC.stop();  
MovieClip(parent).avatarMC.stop();  
MovieClip(parent.parent).headMC.stop();

But this generates Error #1034: Type Coercion failed: cannot convert flash.display

Can someone please shed some light on this? I searched the forums but couldn’t find anything to help, so I apologize in advance if this has been answered before.

Thanks!