Wiley Wiggins - Frame-Ups - actor - Column - Interview

Film Comment, Sept-Oct, 2001

Wiley Wiggins

Best known for his lead role in Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused, Wiley Wiggins returns to the spotlight in Linklater's new Waking Life. Seeing himself rendered as an animated character wasn't as shocking as you might expect, since he also worked on the film as an animator. "To give you some idea of how grueling !he animation process was," he explains, "I worked for three months on what ended up as around twelve seconds of footage." Wiggins is not just Linklater's doppelganger -- their relationship extends offscreen as well. "It's funny. I haven't really kept in touch with am of the oilier actors from Dazed, but I'm really close to a lot of the production people. Rick's been so central to the direction my life has taken." We caught up with Wiggins, now 25, as he was preparing to move to New York City after an unproductive year in L.A. "The problem is casting people always tell me it doesn't seem like I'm acting. The style I picked up from Rick and the films he's turned me onto is to act like a normal person." Wiggins doesn't have any illusions about what it takes to get by, especially considering his own discretion with the projects he's been involved with. "Hopefully I'll get to make a movie once in a while. I'm cool with making a movie even two years if that means it will be something I care about."