Wiley Wiggins

This lanky, dark-haired young actor has appeared in films about troubled or aimless youth. Although he was promoted as a first-time performer when Richard Linklater cast him in the 1993 film "Dazed and Confused", Wiggins had already co-starred in "The Perkins Family" (PBS, 1987), a short-lived soap opera entirely written and acted by kids.

Nonetheless, Wiggins was still an unknown when cast by Linklater as Mitch, the scraggly young "Everyman" in "Dazed and Confused", an episodic look at 70s-era high schoolers in a culturally arid Texas town. Audiences and reviewers either loved or hated the film, but Wiggins' career was off to a flying start.

He next turned up in a smaller role--as a stoned convenience store clerk who meets an untimely end--in C.W. Talkington's debut film, "Love and a .45" (1994), about a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde being chased across Texas. In Stacy Cochran's coming-of-age romance "Boys" (1996), Wiggins had a slightly larger role (and finally left Texas behind), as one of Lukas Haas' New England boarding school friends who helps hide an on-the-lam Winona Ryder.

Wiggins has become involved with Anathema Enterprises, an art and research collective based in Austin, TX, where he has acted, has maintained the organization's Web site and has overseen his own online magazine UNHAPPY found at www.fringeware.com/anathema/unhappy.html.