"Acting?! Are you serious?"
Spencer Darvey was certainly not impressed when his older sister declared to the whole family at the dinner table that her new plan in life was to become a famous, award-winning actress. The whole idea seemed so impractical to him that he couldn't even pretend for a second to be supportive of his sister's latest ambitions in a long line of her other failed endeavors. Granted, Spencer was only a kid at the time, an age where his arrogance was at the peak of its annoyance. He thought he knew everything about everything and never shyed away from asserting himself as the smartest person in the room.
Although his sister was three years older and completely capable of making her own decisions, Spencer still thought he knew more about what was best for her than she did. He went on one of his usual holier-than-thou rants about how her skills were better suited for a more stable career, along with other nonsense about the declining economy and job market, until his mother scolded him to be quiet and eat his vegetables. Their mother was just happy that Hester had not given up on finding her passion, and she didn't want her belligerent son ruining the moment.
Hester wasn't the only sibling who had to endure Spencer's constantly audacious character. For the three Darvey sisters, their baby brother wasn't the cute little runt of the liter that they thought he would be. From an early age, Spencer showed signs of being an advanced child. He learned to crawl, walk, and talk earlier than most toddlers. By the time he entered kindergarten, he had already acquired knowledge of reading and basic math. Spencer was far from being one of those special kids going off to Harvard before they could even grow facial hair, but he did end up skipping the first grade and entering his school's excel program, where he saidwas consistently at the top of his class.
While his intelligence continued to grow at a rate that was well above average, his social skills were a completely different story. With such a huge ego and know-it-all attitude, it wasn't surprising that Spencer didn't get along well with his peers. Instead of making a better effort to make friends, he just blamed everyone at school for being "too stupid" or "too inferior". He didn't like them, and they didn't like him... it was the perfect recipe for anti-social teenage angst. There were a few that he deemed worthy enough to spend his free time with, but that was a very short list, and quite honestly, even those people had their doubts about the friendship. Luckily for him, Spencer was apathetic about his lacking social life. He simply didn't care that he spent the majority of his time alone in his room rather than out and about doing what normal teenagers should do.
It got to the point where Spencer's parents no longer knew how to properly discipline him. How can you ground a kid who never goes out and has barely any friends? Being sentenced to his room felt like a reward, not a punishment. He was able to get away with a lot being the youngest in his family and being deemed "special" at such a young age, but Theo and Melinda knew better than to let their son's lack of respect for adult authority go completely unpunished. On one particular day, when he was 12, Spencer was so rude to his mother that she had no choice but to sentence him to the one thing that he hated the most: his sister's auditions.
Melinda literally dragged him by the ear to the car and forced him to accompany them to the audition in Hollywood. Needless to say, he loathed every single second of it and would not shut up for the entire car ride from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles. The situation didn't get any better when they arrived at the casting call where his mother had to once again use the ear pulling method to drag her son out of the car and into the building. "Next time, I rip the whole ear off!" she yelled, much to his sister's amusement and the amusement of everyone else in the parking lot.
No amount of protesting was going to get Spencer out of the hole that he had dug for himself. He went into his sister's audition, but not without his signature judgmental snark putting a damper on the mood. "Is this what being an actress is like? Waiting over an hour for someone to call your name? Even a monkey could do this." The comment immediately received a loud Shhh! from his mothe and an angry glare from his offended sister. "I'd like to see you try," Hester replied. "I bet you wouldn't last five seconds in there."
If there's one thing you should never do, it's telling Spencer Darvey what he can't accomplish.
Challenging Spencer to anything usually resulted in regret. He had an irritating habit of always being right, and there was nothing he loved more than proving people wrong. "Give me the script," he demanded, "I'll prove to you how easy it is to do this job." While his sister was busy with her audition, Spencer sat in the waiting room reading over the piece of paper. It was some of the most awful writing he had ever laid his eyes on, but he really shouldn't have expected quality writing coming from a Disney Channel program. Memorizing the lines was the part that was especially easy for him. A few lines of dialogue were nothing compared to the paragraphs that he could remember from his textbooks. He was more than confident that he was going to nail this audition and couldn't wait to throw an "I told you so" into Hester's face.
He was wrong, of course. His first audition amounted to nothing more than an awkward attempt of pretending to court a girl (he hadn't even done that in real life) and an extremely bruised ego. But in a strange turn of events, Spencer didn't go completely unnoticed by the casting directors. One of them approached his mother afterwards to let her know that both of her children had potential and asked if she would be interested in bringing them back to audition for different characters. Melinda tried to explain that Spencer was only playing a prank and trying to tease his sister, and she apologized if he had offended anyone. The casting director simply laughed and , "Oh, he is perfect for this other role."
As it turned out, Spencer wasn't right for playing the suave, Mr. Popular, prince charming that he had originally auditioned for, but after he had the audacity to mock the script to the casting directors before he left, they knew that the smartass bully type of characters had his name written all over it. He actually managed to make the casting crew laugh at the end of a very long and grueling day of auditioning a lot of duds. They found his personality a refreshing change. Even with the casting director's encouragement and his mother completely on board to taking him to any audition he wanted (really, she just wanted him to get out of the house and meet other kids), Spencer declined the offer. He had only intended to make fun of his sister, not start a serious career in acting. It was supposed to be just a joke.
It wasn't until he caught sight of one of Hester's paychecks did he finally have a change of heart. He'd have to bus tables at a restaurant for a whole month before he could make what she was making for one acting gig. For a kid from a middle class family living in the suburbs with dreams of attending an ivy league university for both his undergrad and master's degree, money was a precious commodity. His parents made enough working as a teacher and a secretary to keep their household comfortable, but definitely not enough to send four children to a normal college, much less one child to an expensive, out of state school. Spencer was well aware that his road toward higher education would be a bumpy one, so he began saving money to his college fund as early as elementary school. Like always, he was practical, and ironically, it was this practicality that lead him to pursue the most unconventional of jobs.
Acting started off as just a simple way to earn money toward his college tuition. He didn't take the work very seriously in the beginning, but he found that he didn't quite need to, considering all of his roles were on Nickelodeon or Disney Channel shows aimed toward children who probably couldn't care less how good or bad the acting was. He also found that he could play the stereotypical mean kid with ease. After all, he was mostly just being himself, which made the entire experience much more tolerable. To everyone's surprise, and especially his own, Spencer actually began to enjoy working as an actor. It took some getting used to, but eventually, he warmed up to the idea of going to set and playing his character. For the first time ever, he felt fulfilled by something other than reading a textbook or scoring an A+ on an exam. He even made new friends in the process, which nearly caused his mother to have a heart attack the first time he ever brought someone over to the house to hang out.
By the time he graduated high school in 2006, Spencer had been accepted to all the universities he applied for -- Harvard, Yale, UPenn, and his "safer" schools, Stanford and UCLA. The plan was to act until it was time for college, then quit and use the money he had earned to continue on with the rest of the plan of becoming a biomedical research scientist and curing the world of diseases. "The Plan" was a concrete pathway that Spencer had convinced himself was the only direction he could take to achieve a succesful life. He had revolved his entire life around this plan, but he never actually stopped to ask himself if it was really what he wanted, or if he felt like he had no other choice. He just couldn't imagine his life going any other way. But that all changed when he discovered acting and had more doors open up to him. Suddenly, the guy who always knew everything felt like he knew nothing.
When he couldn't decide, he chose both. He opted out of ivy league and accepted UCLA's offer so he could stay in southern California and continue working as an actor. It wasn't about the money for him anymore. As cheesy and embarrassing as it was to admit, acting gave him the outlet that he was missing and it genuinely made him happier than anything else. It helped change him from a rude, condescending jerk to someone who was a little more sensitive and in-tune with human emotions. He was still a sarcastic smartass about 95% of the time, but at least now he knew his limits and when to stop.
Balancing college and acting wasn't too big of a deal in the beginning. He was only taking gueststarring spots on television series or small supporting roles in films, such as Superbad and Middle of Nowhere. But as his resume continued to grow, so did the significance of his characters. On top of that, his classwork at UCLA was becoming increasingly more difficult and time-consuming. It wasn't long before Spencer realized that no amount of caffeine or all-nighters could solve the problem of his clashing schedules. Something had to give. As much as he wanted to have his cake and eat it too, it simply wasn't possible for him to be a committed student and a successful actor at the same time. Not wanting to lose the momentum that he was building in the entertainment industry, he put college on hold during his sophomore year, figuring that he could always return to his education in the future if he needed to.
The decision was tough, with the cold, harsh truth of reality setting in quickly. Letting go of a life long plan that he had ingrained into his brain since he was a child was not going to be an easy feat. There were days where the regret became so overwhelming that he worked himself into a panic attack, ridden with anxiety over the threat and high probability of failure. It was the very thing that he had warned his sister would happen, but now, he was the one having to live through all the doubt and insecurities that came with being an unemployed actor in Hollywood. Was it karma? Possibly. And if so, he probably deserved it.
Things did start to look up for Spencer about a year later. He landed his first leading role as Nick Twisp in Youth in Revolt, and in that same year, he worked with some of the industry's biggest giants -- Meryl Streep, Steve Martin, and Alec Baldwin -- in It's Complicated. It wasn't much, but it was enough to get his name out there and allow him to make crucial connections with important people. Work was somewhat steady from there on out, though not quite as booming as he would've liked. In 2011, he finally found a movie that could be considered his big "breakthrough." As Jacob in Like Crazy, he gained a widely positive reception from viewers for his performance and chemistry with the lead actress.
During this period, Spencer never fully forgot about college. Even after the success of Like Crazy, he still had doubts about whether or not he was making the right decision. Whenever he had a break from filming or started to panic about not receiving new work, he felt a strong urge to listen to the pesky voice in the back of his head that was always reminding him that acting was never a part of The Plan. Nothing about this was ever part of The Plan... but landing a role in one of the world's most popular franchises of all time was never part of the plan either. Just when he was moments away from leaving Hollywood behind to continue his education, Spencer's life went from zero to a hundred when he was cast as Gale Hawthrone in The Hunger Games triology.
Without any shred of doubt, The Hunger Games changed his life. It suddenly felt like that plan of his, the one that he was so stubbornly attached to, didn't matter anymore. Being an actor finally seemed like a real, viable career, even if he still had to pinch himself a couple of times a day to make sure he wasn't dreaming. The odds are ever in his favor now and he's determined to ride out those odds for as long as possible. Spencer knows that his life is probably not going to get anymore exciting than it is right now with The Hunger Games entering its last two movies and the Awards buzz surrounding Whiplash. He's just soaking it all up and trying to have as much fun as possible before it all inevitably starts to fizzle out.