Adam Wylie
Adam Wylie is an actor, born 1984.
Adam Wylie was a working actor before he was ten. The anchor of that period is Picket Fences, where he played Zack Brock, the youngest of the Brock children, from 1992 to 1996: four years on a network drama that was frequently strange and morally argumentative rather than cosy, opposite adults, which is a real apprenticeship rather than a novelty booking.
The second career turned out to be the durable one. He moved into voice work and largely stayed there: Curly Gammelthorpe on Hey Arnold!, Brainiac 5 on Legion of Super Heroes, Pierce in the Ben 10 shows, Peter Pan in Jake and the Never Land Pirates, Jimmy Olsen in Superman: Doomsday. Curly is the standout, a small boy with an unnervingly flat delivery and an appetite for sudden chaos, and Wylie plays him without ever winking at the audience.
The live-action feature credits are less flattering and worth being honest about: a Child's Play sequel, a Children of the Corn sequel, a Sleepaway Camp sequel, an American Pie spin-off. That is the pattern of a former child actor who kept working rather than the pattern of a career being built, and there is no point dressing it up. The recording booth has been considerably kinder to him, and nearly all of the good work is there. Born in San Dimas, California in 1984, he also performs as a magician.
Movies (25)
- American Pie Presents: Band Camp (2005)
- Child's Play 2 (1990)
- The Swan Princess (1994)
- Superman: Doomsday (2007)
- Ben 10: Destroy All Aliens (2012)
- Stepfather 3 (1992)
- Species: The Awakening (2007)
- All Dogs Go to Heaven 2 (1996)
- The Smurfs: The Legend of Smurfy Hollow (2013)
- The Doctor (1991)
- Under Wraps 2 (2022)
- Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror (1998)
- Our Friend, Martin (1999)
- The King and I (1999)
- Return to Sleepaway Camp (2008)
- Out on a Limb (1992)
- Pocket Listing (2016)
- Can of Worms (1999)
- Under Wraps (1997)
- Breaking Free (1995)
- Flying Virus (2001)
- Cutaway (2000)
- Dark Power (2013)
- Porky's: Pimpin' Pee Wee (2009)
- Santa with Muscles (1996)
TV (12)
- Hey Arnold! (1996)
- Ben 10 (2005)
- Jake and the Never Land Pirates (2011)
- Ben 10: Alien Force (2008)
- The Life and Times of Juniper Lee (2005)
- As Told by Ginger (2000)
- American Dragon: Jake Long (2005)
- Picket Fences (1992)
- Fillmore! (2002)
- Legion of Super Heroes (2006)
- Robot and Monster (2012)
- Christy's Kitchen Throwback (2019)
Where to start with Adam Wylie
Curly is the reason to go to Hey Arnold! before anything else. Wylie takes a character who could have been a one-note weirdo and gives him a deadpan so committed that the eruptions land as genuinely unsettling, which is difficult to do in a children's cartoon without breaking it.
For range, Legion of Super Heroes gives him a main role as Brainiac 5, a hyper-rational alien who finds having feelings deeply inconvenient, and Ben 10: Alien Force puts him in a franchise he stayed with for years. Superman: Doomsday is a short, sturdy animated feature. The Swan Princess and All Dogs Go to Heaven 2 are the early voice credits from when he was still a child. On the live-action side, Picket Fences is the one that matters and the one that shows what he could do on camera; Child's Play 2 is a curiosity for horror completists and very little else.