Where’s Wheaton?
Copyright 2009
Susan Chandler Kelley
Remember Wil Wheaton – teen star Wesley Crusher of Star Trek Next Generation? Yes, he’s still around and doing fine! He began blogging before blogging was cool. He maintains a Typepad blog with a large and loyal following: WWdN In Exile – http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/.
Wheaton has also written three books: Dancing Barefoot, Best Days of Our Lives (now in audiobook) and Just A Geek (now in audiobook). An avid gamer, he writes about gaming often but also blogs about his myriad interests: family, being a stepdad, books, writing, hockey, comic books, conventions, and yes, acting.
Wil Wheaton also writes about how he transformed from young actor- who wove Wesley Crusher into a likable wunderkind- into confident adult- now married with a family, who blogs about his sundry passions and how he achieved his transmogrification from young star to adult family man and a “working, struggling actor.”
He may no longer be a teen celebrity centerfold and teenybopper crush, but he quite believably portrayed a comic book artist turned rich soulless collector in an episode of Numb3rs. I do not believe he could have pulled off such an against-the-grain portrayal in his salad days of STNG. Also, he and the rest of the STNG crew recently performed vocally on an episode of Family Guy that premiered 3/29/09.
I stumbled upon Wil Wheaton’s blog back in 2005 quite by accident. I had just learned of the 2003 suicide of Jonathan Brandis (best-kept media secret since the pre-Watergate Nixon era) nearly two years after the fact. (A future blog will cover the late and much lamented JB.) While Websurfing for more information on Brandis, I came across a blog post by Wheaton. A blog reader asked what he thought of Brandis’ suicide at the age of 27, since Wheaton was a child/teen star of 80s-90s as well.
He writes how he might have gone the way of Brandis and so many other child/teen actors who can no longer snare prized parts after passing 20 – had he slipped into a different mind-set. However, Wheaton transitioned from hot young actor to successful adult whose acting career does not rule his life to the exclusion of all else.
Wheaton understood the acting industry very well even as a young man. While speaking to a group of drama students about to graduate he explained: “You have to love [acting] more than you hate how unfair the industry is, more than the constant rejection – and it is constant – hurts. You must have a passion within you that makes it worthwhile to struggle for years while pretty boys and pretty girls take your parts away from you again and again and again.”
He realized he no longer had that passion and was not willing to sacrifice life, love and family to the vagaries of the Hollywood industry. “I have only had three auditions in the last three months. A year ago that would have killed me, but I’m really not bothered by it now.”
Wheaton turned his passion for acting to writing and has since realized “I could be an actor and a writer, but my resolve to put my family ahead of everything, instead of putting Make It As An Actor No Matter What ahead of everything[,] remains.” Well said, Wil Wheaton!
MilkyWayfarer 