With a name like Wiley Wiggins, a person is hard to forget. Wiggins is best known for his role as Mitch Kramer in the famous movie Dazed and Confused. But the actor has been very busy since the 1993 cult classic. So, what has Wiley Wiggins been up to?
Background Info
Wiley Ramsey Wiggins was born in Austin, Texas on November 6, 1976. He is the nephew of Lanny Wiggins, a member of Janis Joplin’s band, The Waller Creek Boys. In the early 1990s, Wiggins occasionally wrote for cyberculture magazines, exploring the various ways people used the Internet, such as FringeWare Review, Mondo 2000, and Boing Boing. He graduated from McCallum High School in Texas. He also worked as a user interface (UI) designer and as a board member of the Juegos Rancheros arts nonprofit.
Wiggins landed his first acting role in the 1980s in The Perkins Family, an all-kids improv soap opera produced by PBS. The show, which ran for 13 episodes in 1986, featured storylines and dialogue that were produced by the child actors.
Dazed and Confused
In 1993, he landed the role of Mitch Kramer in the cult classic Dazed and Confused when he was 16. The 90s comedy featured a large ensemble cast and followed a variety of Texas teenagers during the last day of school in 1976 – ironically, the same year Wiggins was born. The film was ranked third on Entertainment Weekly magazine’s list of the 50 Best High School Movies in 2006.
What did he do after Dazed and Confused?
Afterwards, Wiggins was in a variety of movies throughout the rest of the 1990s, such as Love and a .45, Boys, Plastic Utopia, and The Faculty. He continued taking roles into the 2000s, but added to his repertoire as an animator in Waking Life and producer in Frontier. He started acting again in the late 2000s with Goliath in 2008 and his most recent role was in 2018 in Social Animals.
In 2005, Wiggins was a part of the documentary Making ‘Dazed,’ which reunited the cast a decade later and showed behind-the-scenes footage from the movie. It celebrated how the movie had launched many careers, like Matthew McConaughey. In 2013, Wiggins won the Star of Texas Award, placing him in the Texas Film Hall of Fame, for his role as Mitch Kramer.
Though his last known acting role was in 2018, Wiggins is also a game designer. He voiced Future Buddy in the game The Gunstringer: The Wavy Tube Man Chronicles in 2011. In 2020, he performed research and transcription work for the podcast You Must Remember This, a podcast focusing on the dark side of Hollywood. He also voiced Tex Watson for the podcast in a 2015 episode.
What is Wiley Wiggins doing now?
Nowadays, Wiggins is a writer and artist. He runs his own personal blog at wileywiggins.com/blog. The blog features links and stories of his many performances in movies, podcasts, and the audiobook Downtown Owl. He also writes for other sources, such as his 2017 article in Austin Monthly. Wiggins is a SAG-AFTRA performer, but doesn’t use representation. From 2011 to 2018, he ran and produced the Fantastic Arcade Indie Games Festival in Austin.
Currently, Wiggins is an art student at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA). He received his A.A.S in Game Development, Animation, and Motion Graphics (2D Animation Specialization) from Austin Community College in 2019. He graduated from UCLA in 2021 with his B.A. in Design. Currently, Wiggins is an M.F.A. Student in Media Arts at UCLA, where he is expected to graduate in 2023.
He created art performances and installations, such as Mud Room and Computer Chess, video and animation projects, like Misanthrope and Catalog, and games, like Grotto and Obelisk. He frequently updates his blog, the latest post being on January 28, 2023.
Personal Life
Wiley Wiggins uses the pronouns he/him. Currently, he is 46 years old. From 2002-2005, Wiggins was married to Tamara Wiggins. Outside of his blog/website, Wiggins has social media on the site xz.vc, a decentralized social network he joined in November of 2022. He also has pages on GitHub and Instagram under the username @wysiwyggins. Most of his interests follow independent artistic performances and game design. He also has a page on Pinterest (@wileywiggins), YouTube (@weevil76), and Vimeo under his own name.