Wil Wheaton reveals his abusive childhood helped him relate to character in 'Stand by Me'

Rob Reiner’s Stand By me completed 35 years and on this occasion, Will Wheaton revealed what inspired his character, Gordie. The actor revealed that he had an abusive childhood and that inspired his performance. He said he never wanted to be an actor as a kid and his parents forced him to be an actor. Wil Wheaton’s mother was an actor by profession and she decided to choose the same profession for their son.

Wil Wheaton shares about his childhood

During an interview with Yahoo Entertainment, Wil Wheaton revealed his mother would coach him to go to her agency and tell the children’s agent that he wanted to do what his mother did, which is ‘acting’. Wil Wheaton was 14 years old when featuring alongside River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, and Jerry O’Connell as a lead actor but had been working as a child actor in several films, for about five years.

He further added that he went through a combination of emotional abuse by his father and a lot of manipulation by his mother who used him and eventually ended up in that place. He then said that this helped him develop his character as Gordie. Wil Wheaton feels Gordie’s experience very much reflected his experience since his character and his brother were scapegoats of the family. Wheaton could not ignore the unbelievable sadness in his eyes and he could not ignore the reality that it was the sadness, isolation what his character needed and Rob Reiner saw it. Wil Wheaton said he wanted to be a writer so that makes him 'Gordie', and he never realized until his 40s that he was Gordie "because he was Gordie" in real life.

Stand By Me released in 1986 and was based on Stephen King’s 1982 novella The Body. The film starred  Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O'Connell, and Kiefer Sutherland. It followed the story of four boys in 1959 Castle Rock, Oregon, who go on a hike to find the dead body of a missing boy.

IMAGE: STILL FROM STAND BY ME