Crew Profile: Wesley Crusher

The story behind Wil Wheaton's acting, and how his time on the Enterprise did very little to help his career

When you’re born in Burbank, California, just a few miles from the Hollywood sign, a career in acting may be hard to avoid. It’s especially hard to escape when your mother is Debbie Wheaton, who played a variety of largely uncredited roles in the 1970s and 80s, none of whom left any mark that survives to this day. It seems that Wheaton’s mother was keen to fulfil her dreams of stardom vicariously through her son, and told him to go to her agent and say “I want to do what mummy does”. In later years, Wheaton was come to view his mother’s behaviour negatively... but what can you do as a kid when your parents tell you to go into acting...?

At age nine, he made his debut in the 1981 TV movie A Long Way Home, playing the younger role of the lead character, played as an adult by Timothy Hutton, now perhaps best known as ‘the Mastermind’ in the TV show Leverage. He worked solidly throughout the 80s, including such forgettable role as ‘friend of the main character’s younger brother’ in The Last Starfighter and, perhaps more significantly, as Martin in The Secret of N-I-M-H. His breakthrough role came in 1986 when he landed the role of Gordie Lachance in Rob Reiner’s Stand by Me, which adapted Stephen King’s novella “The Body”. It was this that caught the attention of the producers of the new television show Star Trek: The Next Generation....

But at the time, it was impossible for Wil Wheaton to be cast in the role of Ensign Crusher because the original role was a girl named ‘Leslie Crusher’...