Riley Weston
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| Riley Weston | |
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| Born | Poughkeepsie, New York |
Riley Weston (born in Poughkeepsie, New York) is an actress and screenwriter who became embroiled in a debate about ageism in Hollywood, after it was discovered that she lied about her age to get work in the entertainment industry.
Weston had bit film and television roles as a young girl, including the 1980s sitcoms Growing Pains and Who's the Boss?. In 1997, she legally changed her name to Riley Weston and began claiming her date of birth as 1979 in order to be considered for acting roles.
In 1998, at the age of 32, she began drafting screenplays and marketing herself to television studios as a recent high school graduate. (She claimed that her husband was her older brother.) She was soon hired by the WB Network as a writer for the show Felicity. Hailed as a child prodigy and "wunderkind," she was featured on Entertainment Weekly's October 1998 "it list" of the "100 Most Creative People in Entertainment," which described her as an up-and-coming 19-year-old. Shortly thereafter, she was offered a half-million dollar screenwriting deal with Disney.
Her real identity and age were exposed after a Felicity producer checked Weston's social security number. Soon after, her contract with WB expired and was not renewed, and her deal with Disney fell through. The story sparked much discussion about age bias in entertainment. Weston herself was quoted as asking "If I were getting a job in any other industry, do you think anyone would care how old I am?" She continues to work as an actress, singer, voiceover artist and author. Weston's first novel, Before I Go, was published in September 2006.
