Richard William "Wil" Wheaton III is an American actor, blogger and writer, known for his portrayals
of Wesley Crusher on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gordie Lachance
in the film Stand by Me, Joey Trotta in Toy Soldiers, and for his recurring role as a
fictionalized version of himself on the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory.
Early life Wheaton was born July 29, 1972 in Burbank,
California, to Debbie, an actress, and Richard William Wheaton, Jr., a medical specialist.
He has a brother, Jeremy, and a sister, Amy.
Both appeared uncredited in the episode "When the Bough Breaks" of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Amy also appeared alongside her brother in The Curse.
Career Acting
Wheaton made his acting debut in the 1981 television film A Long Way Home, and his first
cinema role was as Martin Brisby in the 1982 animated film The Secret of NIMH, the movie
adaptation of Robert C. O'Brien's Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.
He had a minor role in the 1984 movie The Last Starfighter as Louis' friend but it was
cut out.
He first gained widespread attention in 1986 as Gordie Lachance in Stand by Me, the film
adaptation of Stephen King's The Body.
Star Trek From 1987 to 1990, he played Wesley Crusher
in the first four seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
This became a recurring role later in the series.
Although his Star Trek character, and by extension Wheaton himself, was disliked by a vocal group
of Trekkies during TNG's first run, he commented about his critics in an interview for WebTalk
Radio:
Later, I determined that the people who were really, really cruel – like the Usenet weenies
– really are a statistically insignificant number of people.
And I know, just over the years from people who've e-mailed me at my web site and people
who I've talked to since I started going to Star Trek conventions again in the last five
years, that there are so many more people who really enjoyed everything about the show,
including my performance, including the character.
Wheaton's popularity among Star Trek fandom is covered in a number of web comics.
ArcaneTimes of March 25, 2005 offers a sympathetic position.
Something Positive presents a range of opinions as part of the storyline Mike's Kid.
Abstruse Goose tries to distinguish between the character and the actor.
Post-Star Trek In 1991, he played Joey Trotta in the action
film Toy Soldiers.
After leaving Star Trek, Wheaton moved to Topeka, Kansas, to work for NewTek, where
he helped to develop the Video Toaster 4000, doing product testing and quality control.
He later used his public profile to serve as a technology evangelist for the product.
Wheaton said this was a period of growth in his life, and living away from Los Angeles
helped him deal with anger issues.
He came back to Los Angeles, attended acting school for five years, then re-entered the
acting world.
In the late 1990s, Wheaton appeared in several independent films, including the award-winning
The Good Things, in which he portrays a frustrated Kansas tollbooth worker.
It was selected Best Short Film at the 2002 Deauville Film Festival.
He received the Best Actor award at the 2002 Melbourne Underground Film Festival for his
performance in Jane White Is Sick & Twisted.
Voice work
He has worked as a voice actor in cartoons, video games, audiobooks, and anime, beginning
with the role of young Martin Brisby in The Secret of NIMH at age 10.
His most noteworthy credits include the roles of Aqualad in the cartoon Teen Titans, the
voice of radio journalist Richard Burns in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Kyle in the
Nickelodeon cartoon, Kyle + Rosemary, himself and various other characters on both Family
Guy and Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, the second Blue Beetle, Ted Kord,
on Batman: The Brave and the Bold in the episode "Fall of the Blue Beetle!", Yakumo in Kurokami:
The Animation, Menma in Naruto, Hans in Slayers Evolution-R and Aaron Terzieff in Mobile Suit
Gundam Unicorn.
He appeared as himself in a skit on nerdcore rapper MC Frontalot's 2008 album Final Boss
attempting to be a rapper, whose rhymes only involved shellfish.
He later collaborated with Frontalot on "Your Friend Wil", a track from the 2010 album Zero
Day on the subject of Wheaton's Law, which states "don't be a dick".
Wheaton and Frontalot have both appeared at the Penny Arcade Expo.
Wheaton has also narrated a number of bestselling audiobooks, mostly in the science-fiction
and fantasy category, including Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, Redshirts by John Scalzi,
and books 6–10 of the Chronicles of Amber series by Roger Zelazny.
TV and web series guest appearances He was a contestant on a 2001 episode of The
Weakest Link featuring Star Trek actors attempting to win money for charity.
Wheaton's had guest appearances on the November 23, 2007 episode of the TV series Numb3rs,
and the October 22, 2008 episode of the series Criminal Minds.
He has also appeared in Internet presentations, including a cameo in a comedy sketch for LoadingReadyRun,
and the May 30, 2008 episode of the Internet series Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show.
Wheaton appears in seasons three, four and five of the web series The Guild as Fawkes,
the leader for a rival guild known as Axis of Anarchy.
He also appears in seasons two, three and four of the TV series Leverage, as rival computer
hacker Colin "Chaos" Mason, antagonist to Leverage team hacker Alec Hardison.
He makes regular appearances in many web productions for Geek & Sundry, including hosting Tabletop,
a board game based show on the channel.
He appeared as a fictionalized version of himself in several episodes of situation comedy
The Big Bang Theory, starting in the fifth episode of the third season "The Creepy Candy
Coating Corollary".
On the show, Wheaton behaves in comically petty and manipulative ways towards main character
Sheldon Cooper, who regards him an archenemy until the fifth season episode "The Russian
Rocket Reaction", when they make amends and become friends.
Wheaton appears in twelve episodes in a recurring, guest-starring role on Eureka, playing Dr.
Isaac Parrish, the head of the Non-Lethal Weapons Lab at Global Dynamics and a thorn
in Fargo's side.
Live shows Wheaton has performed improvisational and
sketch comedy at the ACME Comedy Theater in Hollywood.
He has a traveling sketch comedy/improv troupe called "EarnestBorg9" that performs science
fiction-related comedy at conventions.
Wheaton is one of the three headline acts of the w00tstock shows, appearing in nearly
all of them when his filming schedule has allowed.
Hosting From September 2006 to September 2007, he
hosted a Revision3 syndicated video podcast called InDigital along with Jessica Corbin
and veteran host Hahn Choi.
Wheaton hosted a NASA video on the Mars Curiosity rover which landed on Monday August 6, 2012.
He has also hosted "2nd Watch," interviews with cast members and producers of the science-fiction
series Falling Skies that appears on-line after each episode.
On April 3, 2014, Wheaton announced on his blog that his new show called The Wil Wheaton
Project would premiere on the SyFy network at 10pm on May 27 for an initial projected
run of twelve episodes.
Writing Wheaton runs his own blog, Wil Wheaton Dot
Net.
Between 2001 and late 2004, he operated a message board, known as "The Soapbox" or "Paracosm",
as part of the blog site.
Two collections of writings taken from postings to the message board have been published,
titled Boxer Shorts and Boxer Shorts Redux.
He contributes regularly to the Los Angeles-based Metroblogging site.
In June 2005, he became that month's featured Tech writer for the SuicideGirls Newswire.
He had a monthly column, entitled "Wil Save," in the Dungeons & Dragons-based magazine Dungeon,
until May 2005.
From January 2005 to October 2006, he wrote a column for The Onion AV Club about early
video games, called "Games of Our Lives."
On December 12, 2008, he returned to his role as Geek in Review editor, with his editorials
being published every second Wednesday of the month.
In early 2003, he founded the independent publishing company Monolith Press and released
a memoir entitled Dancing Barefoot.
Monolith Press was "founded on the idea that publication should not be limited by opportunity."
Most of the entries are extended versions of his blog entries.
Dancing Barefoot sold out three printings in four months.
In winter 2003, Wheaton signed to publisher Tim O'Reilly with a three-book contract.
O'Reilly acquired Dancing Barefoot, and published his extended memoirs, Just a Geek, in summer
of 2004.
He has since written about his bitterness regarding how the book was marketed, believing
it was pitched as a Star Trek book when he intended it as more of a personal memoir.
Subsequently in 2007, his next book, "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" was again published
by Monolith Press.
With the release of Sunken Treasure: Wil Wheaton's Hot Cocoa Box Sampler in February 2009, instead
of using traditional publishing, Wheaton decided to self-publish using Lulu Publishing, releasing
paperback and digital copies, something he has continued to do with all his publications
since.
As a chapbook, Sunken Treasure contains several small extracts of various different projects,
including two short stories from Ficlets, an ACME comedy sketch, William's Tell and
a Criminal Minds production diary.
The production diary was later released as an audiobook.
Later that same year, Wheaton released Memories of the Future: Volume 1, a humorous critique,
as well as an account of Wheaton's own experiences with and memories, of the first thirteen episodes
of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Closing up 2009, Wheaton published a special edition of "The Happiest Days of Our Lives",
which also included an afterword by his son, Ryan.
The Happiest Days of Our Lives and Sunken Treasure were also released on a Creative
Commons license.
Politics Wheaton described himself as a liberal in
2005.
In September 2006, he criticized George W. Bush's antiterrorism plan: "Shame on President
Bush.
Shame on his Republican allies in Congress, and shame on the spineless, cowardly Democrats
who did not stand up to them."
In a column that he wrote for Salon.com in 2005, The Real War on Christmas, Wheaton attacked
conservative commentators like Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity for influencing
the political views of his parents, with whom Wheaton found himself unable to have political
discussions during family get-togethers on holidays like Christmas.
Wheaton's parents were very offended by the article, and he posted a lengthy apology on
his site and an interview in which his parents clarified their political views.
On August 24, 2007, he gave the keynote for the yearly Penny Arcade Expo, which was subsequently
made available online.
He stepped in following a public battle between the formerly-scheduled keynote debate participants,
noted anti-games activist Jack Thompson and Hal Halpin, the president of the Entertainment
Consumers Association.
Much of Wheaton's address focused on the debate over violence in video games.
He also gave the keynote at PAX East 2010 in Boston, Massachusetts.
He supported Barack Obama in the 2008 Presidential Election and opposed Proposition 8, calling
it "nothing but hate and discrimination".
Games In 2003, Wheaton mentioned his love for the
game of poker on his blog.
The following year, he began writing more extensively about his poker-playing experiences,
including stories about playing Texas hold 'em tournaments locally and in Las Vegas.
Eventually, he worked up to regular play, including a run at the 2005 World Poker Tour
Championships.
On June 23, 2005, Wheaton accepted an invitation to join Team PokerStars.
He went on to play in that year's World Series of Poker and was the guest speaker for the
2005 BARGE Banquet.
In June 2007, he announced he would no longer be on Team Pokerstars due to changes in the
U.S. legal system that would cause poker sites to have to focus on European and Asian markets
and held a farewell Pokerstars tournament on June 5, 2007, which he titled So Long and
Thanks for All the Chips.
Wheaton is a Dungeons & Dragons player, and played during the PAX 2010 event using the
4th edition rules.
Wheaton, along with webcartoonists Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade, and Scott
Kurtz of PvP, played in front of a live audience.
The game was hosted and recorded by Wizards of the Coast with Chris Perkins as the dungeonmaster.
Wheaton also played D&D 4th edition at the PAX 2011 event using the 4th edition rules,
and used the D&D Next play test rules at PAX Prime 2012.
Wheaton also hosts the web series TableTop, where he explains how to play various card,
board and dice games, then plays a round with celebrity guests.
Wheaton will also be starring in the forthcoming Kickstarter-funded game There Came an Echo
by Iridium Studios.
Comic book Wheaton made a guest appearance as a fictionalized
version of himself in the comic book PS 238, in which he harbors the power of telekinesis.
Wheaton's debut comic book The Guild: Fawkes which he wrote alongside Felicia Day was released
on May 23, 2012.
Audiobooks Wheaton has recorded several of his non-self-published
books as downloadable audiobooks.
These include Just a Geek, Dancing Barefoot, The Happiest Days of Our Lives, and his Criminal
Minds diary from Sunken Treasure.
He also released excerpts of Memories of The Future: Vol 1 as free podcasts.
He has also narrated several audiobooks by other authors, including Ready Player One
by Ernest Cline, Masters of Doom by David Kushner, Fuzzy Nation and Redshirts by John
Scalzi, Peter and Max: A Fables Novel by Bill Willingham, and "Byways", part of METAtropolis:
Cascadia by Tobias Buckell.
Personal life Wheaton was roommates with Chris Hardwick
for some time at UCLA.
They met at a showing of Arachnophobia in Burbank, California.
Wheaton married Anne Prince on November 7, 1999 and lives in Arcadia, California with
her and her two sons from a previous relationship.
When one son was 19, he asked Wheaton to legally adopt him, which he did.
Wheaton is an aficionado of computers, the Internet and technology in general.
He says he is drawn to alternatives like Linux because he is left-handed, though he ceased
using Linux when he switched to Windows 2000.
Since at least 2003, his operating system of choice has been OS X, though he still runs
Linux in a virtual machine.
He also enjoys brewing his own beer at home, and collaborated with Fark creator Drew Curtis
and Stone Brewing Co.
CEO Greg Koch to create a geek-themed stout beer called Stone Farking Wheaton w00tstout.
Filmography & other mass media works Television
Film
Internet videos Video games
Bibliography
References
External links Wil Wheaton dot Net
WWdN: In Exile Wil Wheaton at the Internet Movie Database
Wil Wheaton at the TCM Movie Database Wil Wheaton at AllMovie
Wil Wheaton at DMOZ Wil Wheaton at Anime News Network's Encyclopedia