do newActor() and preRestart() in the right order, see #1854

akka-actor-tests/src/test/scala/akka/actor/SupervisorMiscSpec.scala

@@ -60,5 +60,22 @@ class SupervisorMiscSpec extends AkkaSpec(SupervisorMiscSpec.config) with Defaul
         assert(Await.result(actor4 ? "status", timeout.duration) == "OK", "actor4 is shutdown")
       }
     }
+
+    "be able to create named children in its constructor" in {
+      val a = system.actorOf(Props(new Actor {
+        context.actorOf(Props.empty, "bob")
+        def receive = {
+          case x: Exception ⇒ throw x
+        }
+        override def preStart(): Unit = testActor ! "preStart"
+      }))
+      val m = "weird message"
+      EventFilter[Exception](m, occurrences = 1) intercept {
+        a ! new Exception(m)
+      }
+      expectMsg("preStart")
+      expectMsg("preStart")
+      a.isTerminated must be(false)
+    }
   }
 }

akka-actor/src/main/scala/akka/actor/ActorCell.scala

@@ -389,7 +389,6 @@ private[akka] class ActorCell(
     def recreate(cause: Throwable): Unit = try {
       val failedActor = actor
       if (system.settings.DebugLifecycle) system.eventStream.publish(Debug(self.path.toString, clazz(failedActor), "restarting"))
-      val freshActor = newActor()
       if (failedActor ne null) {
         val c = currentMessage //One read only plz
         try {
@@ -398,6 +397,7 @@ private[akka] class ActorCell(
           clearActorFields()
         }
       }
+      val freshActor = newActor()
       actor = freshActor // assign it here so if preStart fails, we can null out the sef-refs next call
       freshActor.postRestart(cause)
       if (system.settings.DebugLifecycle) system.eventStream.publish(Debug(self.path.toString, clazz(freshActor), "restarted"))