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Wil Wheaton: Biography
Like many talented actors who were popular from their work in the Star Trek franchise, much of Wheaton's career has been limited to Trek-oriented appearances. During his youth, he was a prominently featured guest at Star Trek conventions and very popular in teen magazines. However, barring teen work in the 1980s and
Stand By Me, he has done little else of note in the way of performing. As he left TNG during the middle of its television run, and as three other Trek series have come since, Wheaton eventually faded from the convention scene as well, replaced by more popular actors/characters.
Like many actors attempting to revitalize their careers, he has as of the late 1990s embraced independent film with various appearances. Several of his independent films have won awards:
The Good Things, in which Wheaton portrays a frustrated Kansas tollbooth worker, was selected Best Short Film at the 2002 Deauville Film Festival. He also received the Best Actor award at the 2002 Melbourne Underground Film Festival for his performance in
Jane White Is Sick And Twisted. He was also a contestant on a Star Trek themed episode of The Weakest Link, and performs improvisational and sketch comedy at the ACME Comedy Theater in Hollywood. He has a travelling sketch comedy/improv troupe called "EarnestBorg9" that performs Sci-Fi and geek-related comedy at conventions.
Although his character (and by extension Wil himself) was loudly hated by a small but vocal group of Trekkers (see Usenet group alt.ensign.wesley.die.die.die or alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die) during TNG's first run, Wheaton has emerged as a vocal member of the geek / nerd community and runs his own weblog web site, Wil Wheaton Dot Net. The majority of his present popularity comes from this web site, the books it has spawned, and from fans who admire his earlier work. He is a frequent poster at Slashdot and Fark, and is heavily involved with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, promoting free speech and privacy issues. Wil also contributes regularly to the Los Angeles based Metroblogging site. His work as a voice actor can be found in such diverse places as the Disney animated film "Brother Bear", as Aqualad of the cartoon "Teen Titans" and, most recently, as the voice of radio newsman Richard Burns in the smash hit video game "," latest in Rockstar Entertainment's GTA series.
Wheaton married Anne Prince in 1999. He lives with his wife and two step-sons in Los Angeles, California. Wheaton is often confused with Will Wheaton, Junior, a jazz musician who contributed to the film Mystery Men, among other works.
In the spring of 2003, Wheaton founded the independent publishing company Monolith Press and released a book of his memoirs, entitled Dancing Barefoot. Most of the entries are extended versions of his online blog entries. Wheaton sold out three printings in four months, and in the winter 2003, the book's success caught the eye of publisher Tim O'Reilly, who signed Wheaton to a three book contract. O'Reilly acquired
Dancing Barefoot, and published Wheaton's extended memoirs, Just A Geek in summer of 2004.
Wil has a monthly column "Wil Save" in the Dungeons and Dragons based magazine Dungeon, where he relates anecdotal tales of his life in relation to the famous fantasy RPG.
In January of 2005, Wil began a column about video games in The Onion. In February of 2005, Wil announced that he had won the role of a one-off character in CSI.
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LiteratureWil Wheaton (and his GTA obsession) profiled in GEEK.
Bonnie Burton interviews actor, author, gamer, and geek-er Wil Wheaton in this month's edition of GEEK. Snip: Geek: (...) I need to know how far you?ve gotten in Grand Theft Auto IV. Wil Wheaton: I haven?t been playing GTA IV that long since the game came out?maybe five hours so far. My progress meter is at like eight percent or something like that. I?ve gotten to a point where the story took a rather shocking and unexpected twist. The character that you control in the game is a very conflicted guy with a pretty complicated and dark history. The guy is more real and has more depth to him than any of the other characters I?ve controlled in GTA. Until last night, I may have played one or two story missions to advance the game, but I really just spend the rest of my time driving around and crashing into cars. I drive cars until they catch on fire. I like to go driving through the parks and hit the pedestrians. I?ve noticed a couple of things like if you?re going really fast and you hit a wall or a tree something like that you?ll fly through the front windshield of the car. So I drove really fast down the wrong side of the street on the expressway and hit a car head-on, and the driver shot through the windshield and landed on the hood of my car. That level of detail is just remarkable. But it suddenly felt weird just driving around the city mowing down pedestrians. Has it started to warp your sense of reality when you?re stuck in traffic yet? I hate driving. I absolutely despise it. I particularly hate driving in Los Angeles. I?ll be out somewhere with my wife and point out things, and tell her if this was Grand Theft Auto we wouldn?t have to sit here like this. We could just drive over that median. Wil Wheaton [ Geek Blog / Geek Magazine. Disclaimer: I have been profiled there previously. ]...
Published: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 02:49:58 GMT - Source: Boingboing.Net - Read the article
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