I needed new headshots and publicity shots, so I asked my friend, Kaelen, to come over to Castle Wheaton and help me out. We took a few dozen pictures in a few different locations, and I’m super happy with what we got. Here’s one of them:
When we finished shooting for the day, I had a realization that probably means more to me than it will to anyone else, but since that’s never stopped me from writing about something before…
I hate having my picture taken. I feel like I have ugly teeth, my forehead is too big, and my eyes always reveal how deeply sad I am inside. If you wonder why I’m usually pulling a face in pictures, now you know why. It’s like my armor, I guess.
This started early one morning when I was seven or eight years-old. I had to have headshots taken for commercial casting agents, and my mom took me out of school one day to meet with a photographer she knew. I remember feeling like I was getting a free day off, because I didn’t have to go to school (I don’t know why we didn’t do this on a weekend. Or maybe we did and I don’t remember that part of the day correctly. It’s not the important part, which I’m getting to, anyway). On the way to wherever we were going, my mom drove us through a McDonald’s, and let me get an Egg McMuffin. This was a big deal for me, because my parents never got us fast food. So I remember getting that, a greasy hashbrown, and that concentrated orange juice that came in the plastic cup with a foil seal. I wasn’t allowed to eat in the car, so I kept my bag of fancy McDonald’s breakfast in my lap until we got to the park and met the photographer.
He made me uncomfortable right away. He was just too wound up, too excited, had way too much energy. I was so little, I didn’t know how to vocalize any of these feelings, and my parents were very much into me and my sister following rules, so I just behaved myself and sat down at a picnic table to eat. I can see and feel it now: it’s cool and a little damp, probably late Spring. The picnic table is made of wood, and someone has scratched their initials into the bench. I have carefully stabbed the straw through the foil top of my orange juice, and my hash brown is still in its little cardboard holder, sitting on the carefully unfolded bag that I’m using as a placemat. I have my Egg McMuffin in my hand, ready to eat it. The photographer grabs it out of my hand, takes a bite, spits the food out on the grass, and hands it back to me. “Okay!” He says, with terrifying enthusiasm, “act like you just took a big bite of this and you love it!” He begins taking photos.
I don’t remember anything else with any clarity. It was almost forty years ago, but I can still feel — right now I feel — how upset that made me. One of my overwhelming memories from being a kid actor is that I didn’t have a voice in my own life, and that I had to do what the adults around me wanted me to do. That guy, who I’m positive didn’t mean anything cruel and was just excited to get to work, snatching my breakfast away from me and turning it into a prop for a photo shoot I didn’t even want to be part of, perfectly encapsulated everything I ever felt about being a kid actor. For the next few hours, I had to pose like an idiot, doing exaggerated expressions and changing my clothes a dozen times, because that’s how it worked in the late 70s.
Flash forward about four or five years. (My god I can’t believe it was only four or five years later, but that’s how fast the childhood that was stolen from me went by.) I’m in a studio with the other kids from Stand By Me. We’re posing for some publicity shots that will eventually make their way into teen magazines. I feel so awkward and uncomfortable. I am not cool like River, I am not famous like Corey, and I am not funny like Jerry. I am just sad and weird and self conscious and I want to be anywhere else.
Flash forward another year or so. I’m trying to figure out who I am and what I’m doing in my life. I’m at some party at Paramount, where I work every day on TNG. I’m only fourteen or maybe fifteen. There are no other kids my age there, and I feel sad and weird. I can’t relate to kids my own age because I never get to be around them, and I can’t relate to the adults I am always around, because I am a kid. I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do at this party where nobody is paying attention to me, when a photographer comes up and takes my picture. He doesn’t ask, he doesn’t give me a chance to get ready. He just calls my name and when I look up, he takes this shot, which of course goes into a teen magazine:
Maybe you don’t see it, but I can see how sad I am, even though I’m trying to do this smile thing I’ve settled upon where I don’t show my ugly teeth that I hate.
They say that the camera doesn’t lie, that the camera reveals what’s going on inside a person, and I think that’s accurate. In all these pictures of me from the 80s and 90s, you can see how weird and awkward I am, and I can see how much I wanted to be anywhere else. Maybe I didn’t like pictures because they made me feel so vulnerable, since I was forced to just be me, instead of putting on the mask of a character I was playing. Maybe I just didn’t want to pose for pictures because it was yet another thing that normal kids didn’t do, and I wanted to be a normal kid (for values of “normal” that I didn’t really understand, but heavily romanticized. Thanks, John Hughes).
Anyway. This is all context that, like I said, probably doesn’t matter to anyone who isn’t me. It is context that matters to me because the photos we took are only the second time in my life that I have asked someone to take my picture, because I wanted it taken. I realized that when we were finishing up, and it made me feel happy.
I love the pictures that we got, and I love that I’m at a place in my life, finally, that has allowed me to feel a little more comfortable in the camera’s eye.
Wil, as a writer and photographer I feel compelled to say that fellow who soiled your breakfast sandwich was a schmuck.
Thanks for letting us in. ~ Jonathan
That photographer that took a bite out of your food and spit it out then used it as a photo prop… wow… since you were 7 or 8 as you put it I would consider that uncool to the extreme at any age but more so happening to a kid. I hope your parents gave him hell. Sounds like you pretty much had a shitty experience. Thanks for sharing sorry.. 🙁
That is a kickass photo for the inside jacket cover dude!
I just wanted to say thank you, for being you.
I don’t know how to react to enthusiasm and high energy. Often times, I can be excited and happy about something but someone will come in and be completely over the top with it and just ruin the whole experience for me.
I’ve had similar issues throughout my life; of being uncomfortable in front of cameras and making faces to protect myself from seeing myself looking normal. I’ve never gotten over it. I hate photos. I hate family photos. I won’t do posed photos, period. I’m a foot taller than anyone else in the photo. I’m not overweight but being near others makes me look like a giant. My teeth are too messed up to be exposed to the unsuspecting and innocent world… people tell me I could model and I assume they’re absolutely nuts.
The only quote I’ve ever read that made me reconsider myself was from a little comic strip someone drew on Tumblr; “You’re not ugly, you’re just not your type!”
Every time I think about myself, I think about that quote. Sometimes it helps a little, sometimes… it does nothing for me. I’d rather find myself attractive and have confidence in my appearance than… the opposite?
Anyway, I just thought I’d say “Hello!” and “I have similar experiences” but instead I rambled.
Toot-a-loo, Caribou
This is weird/uncomfortable to say for some reason, which is why I’ve hesitated so long, but thank you for giving me some insight into something that has bothered me for years about my ex-husband. He was a Star Trek fan who identified with Wesley, btw, as a too-smart kid.
The sad eyes and expression on you in your teenage pic – EXACTLY like his. Whenever someone approached, he put on that wan smile like he was gearing up for a performance, and then he ‘performed’ for them. The eyes, tho, that was permanent. And I never figured out what the deal was with that until I read your post, even tho in retrospect I actually knew despite his lies about his past: deep sadness. Which I added to, and I regret that except that in my defense it was literally a life or death decision. I don’t know if he’s gotten past it like you seem to have and I don’t really care…but thank you.
And if I were your mom, I would have made the photographer pay for a new one, then sit and wait until you ate it (unless the cavewoman side of me came out first and smacked him upside the back of the head…and then made him pay for it and wait…). You really do look actually happy in the nice new pics, too.
Greetings
Hm, this reads impressingly. So you did dozens of photos? Did I oversee them or a link or URL?
regards
Great article, enjoyed reading about it. The sadness you mentioned that you thought may not be recognized by viewers, I could see it. But you know what? Once you know that you feel sad inside, and you are aware of it, then you may be able to do something about it. Most people can be sad by nature, but many disguise it and don’t show it putting on a brave face when facing the world and its challenges every day. I am watching start trek generation II and what a great actor you are! Cheers,
Hi will. Been a fan of your work since day one. In a sense i feel ive grown up with you. (Im now 37). My childhood was fairly sheltered and a stark contrast to yours as i grew up on a remote scottish island.. . But i have developed a lot of insecurities and issues from my childhood. I think we all have something in our childhoods that can develop into nasty little demons. What matters is how you deal with it as you grow older. As i see it.. regardless of what our childhoods were… they are all part and parcel of what makes us the people we are today. Without these experiences we would be very different individuals. I can see the sadness… but i can also see the hope for something better. .. may e those bad experiences are what helped you develop into such a well rounded human with an awful lot of kindness. Never give up on hope… its a freebie in life.
And if you ever worry about your forehead being too big… or teeth too weird etc… just remember this… ALL faces are in proportion. Your forehead is always a third of your face… as is nose to chin and eyebrows to nose tip. Also… i have a thing for good looking teeth… i cant find someone attractive if they have terrible teeth and i think youre hot as fuck. So that says it all.
I wish you nothing but the best with everything. Thank you for making yoir own mental health aware to others and making it okay to not be ‘normal’.
Forever a fan
Jo
This was wonderful.
I can only see a nice, maybe a little bashful kid in that photo, no eye-sadness. If you didn’t tell me, I would say you radiate contentment… It’s such a difference of perception!
We all see ourselves as ‘ugly’ when we see our own photos, I think it’s a human nature thing.
I for one am a fan of big foreheads and it is told they are a sign of wisdom. To each his own.
Yes! I agree with you completely, all 3 points. Very well put, Diana.
My daughter had sad eyes for many years while struggling with anxiety. But her headshots were somehow enhanced by them in an almost haunted kind of way. I think you have to be pretty observant to pick this up though and not many do.
That’s a good picture. You look good. Thank you for having the courage to open up to us. And for everything that you to help us feel a little less alone, a little less outcast.