Wil Wheaton

Wil Wheaton was a very famous kid—right up until he wasn’t. After that, he wasn’t sure who he was at all.

So, in 2001, Wheaton started a blog. It was less about being a famous kid than about being a not-so-famous grownup. He wrote about his pets and his hobbies, punk rock and parenting, board games and birthdays and (most importantly) burritos. He thought he was writing for an audience of one: himself. To be fair, he was only off by about 3 million people.

Wheaton loves to tell stories. He’s been doing it his whole life. By age ten, he had already been acting for three years. In 1986, at age 12, he earned critical acclaim as Gordie Lachance in Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me; at 14, he began his four-year turn as Wesley Crusher on the hit TV series “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

Since then, Wheaton has appeared in dozens of films and TV series, with recurring roles on TNT’s “Leverage,” SyFy’s “Eureka,” and the hit web series “The Guild.” He is the creator, producer, and host of the wildly successful web series “Tabletop," credited with reigniting national interest in tabletop gaming. He played a fictionalized version of himself on CBS’s “The Big Bang Theory,” one of the most highly rated and watched sitcoms of the last decade. Wheaton currently hosts “The Ready Room,” the official online hub for all things Star Trek universe.

An accomplished voice actor, Wheaton has lent his talents to animated series including “Family Guy,” “Teen Titans,” “Guardians of the Galaxy,” and “Batman: The Brave and the Bold.” His video game credits include four installments each of the “Grand Theft Auto” and “Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon” series, as well as “Fallout: New Vegas,” “DC Universe Online,” “Broken Age,” "Code Name: STEAM," and “I Expect You To Die 2.”

His audiobook narration of Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One” debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and was one of Goodreads’ 10 Best Narrator and Audiobook Pairings of All Time. He has also lent his voice to titles by John Scalzi, Randall Monroe, Joe Hill, and Bill Gates. In addition, Wheaton has narrated numerous audiobooks, including "Ready Player One," "Armada," and "Lock In."

When he isn’t acting, narrating, or podcasting, Wheaton is writing. He is the author of "Just A Geek," "Dancing Barefoot," "The Happiest Days of Our Lives," "Hunter," "Dead Trees Give No Shelter," and "Still Just a Geek." He has contributed columns to Salon.com, The A.V. Club, LA Weekly, Playboy, The Washington Post, and the Suicide Girls Newswire.

In his New York Times bestselling "Still Just a Geek," an older, somewhat wiser Wheaton revisits "Just a Geek," his 2004 collection of those blog posts, with all-new reflections that show just how far he’s come. In this vulnerable, honest memoir about trying and failing and trying again, Wheaton opens up about love, trauma, tragedy, and confronting the worst parts of himself. Equal parts funny and poignant, "Still Just a Geek" weighs the folly of youth against the pain of experience—and celebrates all the strange, awful, beautiful adventures in between.

In recent years, Wheaton has earned recognition as an outspoken mental health advocate, chronicling his own journey in his blog and as a public speaker for the National Alliance on Mental Illness. His powerful, candid essay about his struggle with chronic depression and anxiety garnered national attention. He has been vocal about his experience of feeling suicidal as a teenager and his ongoing battle with chronic depression and generalized anxiety.