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It’s easy to be remembered for one role that you played for several years, but that role can also help you ride a wave of fame that keeps you on the minds of people for decades to come. For many, actor Wil Wheaton is known simply as Wesley Crusher from the “Star Trek” series of shows and movies, but he was acting well before that and in the years that followed. Wheaton is ingrained into the nerd culture, and his appearances on television are always a treat to “Star Trek” fans around the world.

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Burbank, California is in the heart of where film and television action is, and that’s where Wheaton was born to an actress mother on July 29, 1972. Wheaton’s father wasn’t involved in acting, with Wil wanting to follow in his mother’s footsteps. Wheaton didn’t even have to wait until his 10th birthday before he started acting, too.

However, Wheaton wasn’t exactly pushed into acting, which helped him to eventually become a normal adult and not one of those tragic stories that you hear about from former child stars. “Even when I was little, people would ask me if I wanted to be a movie star, and I would always say, ‘No, I just want to be an actor,’” Wheaton said. “Even when I was little and going on auditions, it was clear who was there because they wanted to be there, and who was there because their stage parents were making them be there. There was a major difference.”

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Wheaton made his first appearance in 1981 with the TV movie “A Long Way Home”, and the following year was in an after school special for CBS. Wheaton then added a couple more TV movies in the subsequent years and had his feature film debut in 1983 with “The Buddy System” that starred the likes of Richard Dreyfuss and Susan Sarandon.

Wheaton enjoyed a nice breakout in the years that followed with more TV movies and “The Last Starfighter”. In 1986, he starred in the adaptation of the Stephen King novel “Stand by Me” that ended up being a critical and commercial hit. During these years, Wheaton was also guest starring in shows like “Highway to Heaven” and “St. Elsewhere”.

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A year after the success he enjoyed from “Stand by Me”, Wheaton landed the role of Wesley Crusher, the young son of two high ranking parents, with Crusher eventually becoming an engineering officer when joining Starfleet. Wheaton was part of the main cast for the first four seasons, and continued to make appearances here and there for the rest of the show’s run. It became the role that Wheaton is most known for.

“I was a huge ‘Star Trek’ fan as a little kid, so getting to work on ‘Next Generation’ was like getting to do what I used to do as a kid on the playground at elementary school and make it the best virtual reality LARP (live action role play) I’d ever experienced,” Wheaton said of his experience. “I formed relationships and friendships that have endured for 30 years. And when I think past that teenage angst, it’s an overwhelmingly positive and joyful and wonderful part of my life.”

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During his “Star Trek” days, Wheaton continued to make guest appearances on several other television shows like “Tales from the Crypt”. He was also in TV movies and big screen pictures with “She’s Having a Baby” and “Toy Soldiers”. For the remainder of the 1990s, Wheaton was in the films “Pie in the Sky” and “Flubber”, as well as shows such as “Diagnosis: Murder”.

It seemed that people had associated Wheaton with his “Star Trek” character too much in the 2000s, as much of his work came from continued guest roles, and he started to branch out into being an internet presence. Wheaton even returned to the “Star Trek” universe in 2002 with the film “Nemesis”, while also adding films with “Neverland” and “Americanizing Shelley”.

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Since then, Wheaton has only had cameo appearances in small budget films, focusing more on television and the internet. Starting in 2009, Wheaton added a recurring role in “Leverage” and then had a long-running recurring gag on “The Big Bang Theory” when he was often at odds with Jim Parsons’ Sheldon Cooper character.

Wheaton also appeared on multiple episodes of the show “Eureka”, and has been seen here and there on a slew of other programs. Wheaton has been very busy with voice work over the last decade, thanks to animated shows and video games. Since 2012, Wheaton has been busy with the internet series “TableTop” that’s also been broadcast on television. So while he might not be an A-lister on the big screen, Wheaton is very well known and very busy.

Embracing the culture of gamers and sci-fi fans is something that has helped Wheaton immensely. “Someone who I would describe as a ‘geek’ or ‘nerd’ is a person who loves something to its greatest extent and looks for other people who love it the same way so they can celebrate loving it together,” he said. “I met the people who became my gaming group that...I finally found people who were weird like I was: that loved reading and playing games and not just watching a science fiction or fantasy movie but talking all about it.”

“I’m very lucky in that I was inspired by science fiction while I was a little kid, and I was interested in science and technology and was encouraged to pursue those interests,” Wheaton said. “I obviously pursued a career in the arts but always wondered if I had just been supported a little more in math, as opposed to it being a ‘thing I had to learn,’ how that would have changed things for me.”