āTrekā wasnāt his final frontier
The lone drunk guy in a Pasadena pub is feeling talkative, warmed by holiday spirit and beer, even though itās only 11 a.m. He eyeballs the stranger next to him, a thin, sandy-haired man ordering orange juice. āHey, you look familiar,ā the inebriated man tells his new best friend. āDo I know you?ā
Like most former child actors, Wil Wheaton gets this question a lot. On request he politely rattles off his more memorable credits, all of them more than a decade old: a starring role in the 1986 Rob Reiner film āStand by Me,ā five years as squeaky-clean teen Wesley Crusher on the TV series āStar Trek: The Next Generation.ā He doesnāt try jogging the manās memory by mentioning his new career as a writer. For four years heās had a popular blog, wilwheaton.net, postings from which form the basis for his new book āJust a Geek.ā Itās cool enough that cult writer Neil Gaiman, author of āThe Sandmanā graphic novel series, provided the foreword to āGeek.ā But Wheaton knows that to the general population, heās frozen in time, a perpetual adolescent. āI can tell when theyāre running a lot of my episodes on cable,ā he says later, with a shrug.
Back at the pub, the manās eyes light up. Everyone, it seems, is a Trekkie. After naming his favorite episodes, he roars, āMan, why did you give up acting?ā
At 32, Wheaton hasnāt, though it may appear that way. Before making a graceful exit, he explains to his new fan what every actor knows. Sometimes you donāt give up, but Hollywood loses your number anyway. Even with this stranger, heās unflinchingly honest about his fall from grace. Baring his soul, after all, has opened the door for him to have what F. Scott Fitzgerald once said was impossible in American life: a second act.
It was a similar fan encounter at a sports bar in 2000 that made that second act possible, even as it sank Wheaton into a funk. After a waitress asked him if he āused to beā an actor, he decided to āprove to everyone that quitting āStar Trekā wasnāt a mistakeā by building a personal website. But what began as ego stroking segued into a soul-baring examination of the wrong turns, adolescent mistakes and ego-battering disappointments heās had since walking away from the popular āStar Trekā spinoff in 1990. āI examined my life and realized I was everything I hate,ā he says. āAnd thatās what ended up in the book.ā
Though Wheaton briefly turned his back on Hollywood in the ā90s, passing on a role in āPrimal Fearā (a decision he regrets) and briefly working for a software company in Kansas, in recent years heās been struggling to catch Hollywoodās attention. With the exception of voice work in animation and video games (Cartoon Networkās āTeen Titansā and video games Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Ghost Recon 2), heās scored mostly near-misses and forgettable independent movies. Even a brief return to the Enterprise fell flat: His scenes for the 2002 film āStar Trek: Nemesisā ended up on the cutting-room floor.
āI donāt expect people to feel sorry for me,ā he says, his voice raspy from a lingering cold. āBut in the early years of my website, someone sent me an e-mail saying, āYou never talk about yourself,ā ā Wheaton recalls. āAnd [my next post was] OK, Iām scared and Iām frustrated and Iām working so hard but no matter what I do, I canāt get ahead. You wanted to know, now you do.ā
After Wheaton was inundated with positive e-mails, he knew the siteās purpose could no longer be simple self-promotion. āI realized pretty quickly that I had an opportunity, if I didnāt screw it up, to make a positive difference in peopleās lives.ā
The resulting blog entries that make up āJust a Geekā are a mix of cautionary tales, sentiment (he writes about his wife of five years, Anne, and stepsons Nolan and Ryan) and repentance. āWhen I look back on my life from 16 to 21, Iām ashamed of myself,ā he says. āI was such a jerk, because I really believed my own hype. And every now and then I get an e-mail from someone who says, you are so different now from when I met you when you were 19. And I have to say Iām sorry I thought I was such hot [stuff], because in order to be a good husband and a good parent, I need to take responsibility for the person I used to be.ā
That has also meant making his peace with his most defining role, Wesley Crusher. He now regrets exiting āStar Trekā to pursue a film career (āIt just never occurred to me that most actors go their entire career without one movie as special as āStand by Me,ā ā he says) and is quick to dispute the belief that Crusher was largely hated by āTrekā fans. āThat was a statistically insignificant number of people, and believe me, I have researched this,ā he says. āIāve never been able to put that story to bed, and itās definitely hurt me.ā
He knows that some people, including casting directors, will never see him as more than the geeky kid sitting at the bridge of the Enterprise. āIn entertainment, perception is reality. I mean, people think Sylvester Stallone is 6 1/2 feet tall and that Vin Diesel is a good actor,ā he jokes. āBut even my publisher wants āStar Trek,ā āStar Trek,ā āStar Trek.ā And Iām like, come on! This is not some geeky backstage tell-all book.ā
Even so, Wheaton isnāt shy about naming names when telling tales about his rocky acting career (in āGeekā he condemns Jimmy Kimmel for pushing āWin Ben Steinās Moneyā producers to award a co-hosting job to his cousin over Wheaton, and he speaks bluntly about conflicts with āStar Trekā executives).
Still, he hasnāt given up hope that Hollywood may yet come calling. Even as he works on his next book (a novel āabout a guy who ends up at a poker game off the Vegas strip with a gun to his head, and the story is how he got thereā), he performs as a member of the Acme Comedy Theatre troupe in L.A. and is a spokesman for the Alzheimerās Assn. (Wheaton-themed memorabilia is the focus of an EBay charity auction next month). And when the role is right, he auditions.
āI havenāt given up, but Iām not sitting by the phone anymore,ā he says. āIāve taken off the prom dress.ā
*
āJust a Geekā
What: Wil Wheatonās autobiography, based on postings from his blog wilwheaton.net. Info: Published by OāReilly Media Inc., oreilly.com, 296 pages Price: $24.95
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