Riley Weston
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Template:Verifiability Template:Infobox person Riley Weston (born August 25, 1966)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> is an American actress and writer. Weston 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.
Early life
"...she changed her name to Riley Elizabeth Weston (she declines to give her real surname but says her birth name is Kimberlee)"<ref name="latimes-20041220-et-weston">Template:Cite news</ref> — Los Angeles Times
Weston graduated from Arlington High School outside of Poughkeepsie.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Career
Early work
"After graduating in 1984, she moved to LA and started calling herself Kimberlee Kramer—it sounded more actressy, she felt, than Kimberlee Seaman." — Bernard Weinraub, Cosmopolitan January 1999<ref name="lukeford/riley-weston">Template:Cite web</ref>
Beginning in 1987, Weston carved out a career as a film and television actor, working steadily throughout her twenties in a series of mostly small bit parts. Her credits included the sitcoms Growing Pains, Who's the Boss? and 3rd Rock From The Sun, and the film Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit. Through about 1996, she was credited in her appearances as "Kimberlee Kramer".
Age deception and Felicity
In May 1997, and by now using the name Riley Weston, she began claiming her date of birth as 1979 in order to be considered for further acting roles.<ref name=Variety10.15.98>Template:Cite news</ref> The deception was assisted by her slight build, at Template:Convert tall and weighing Template:Convert.<ref name=LifeRiley>Template:Cite news</ref>
"...her reason for lying about her age had nothing to do with scoring a writing job on the hot new teen show airing on the WB and was rooted in her acting dream...it was her choice to lie about her age to get acting gigs that caused the problem."<ref name="wTw/felicity-writer">Template:Cite web</ref>
In 1998, she began drafting screenplays and marketing herself to television studios as a recent high school graduate.<ref name="latimes-19981102-ca-38474">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="thewrap/arthur-axelman">Template:Cite web</ref> She was soon hired by the WB Network as a writer for the show Felicity after they saw one of her scripts about teenage sisters.<ref name=LifeRiley/> She was hailed as a child prodigy and "wunderkind" by publications such as Entertainment Weekly,<ref name=Deadline>Template:Cite web</ref> which included her in its October 1998 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.<ref name=AssociatedPress>Template:Cite web</ref> Series co-creator Matt Reeves cast her as a teenage character in one episode.<ref name=Deadline/>
After Entertainment Tonight began working on a segment about Weston, her real identity and age emerged.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> This occurred after Daily Variety published an October 15, 1998 article reporting that it had obtained court documents showing that Weston had changed her name in 1997 from Kimberlee Elizabeth Kramer, and had been born in 1966 rather than 1979. The day the report was published, Weston admitted that she lied to nearly every individual and entity she interacted with professionally, including her agents, attorneys, colleagues, Disney, and the media. Only her family and manager/ex-husband knew her true identity, a ruse she was able to maintain for as long as she did because, as she explained, "I don't have a lot of friends." She also created false identification documents, wore baggy clothes typically worn by teenagers at the time, brought her mother to meetings, and made comments more common to teens, such as working as a babysitter and having a crush on popular teen idol Jonathan Taylor Thomas.<ref name=Variety10.16.98>Template:Cite web</ref>
Weston apologized for her deception, telling Daily Variety, "I take full responsibility. I'm completely sorry. I never meant to hurt anyone." She also explained her rationale for lying about her age, stating that it was "accepted practice for actresses to lie about their age", owing to "age bias" in the entertainment industry. Weston elaborated:<ref name=Variety10.16.98/>
"I wanted to have a job. I wanted to work as an actor, but if I'd go into a casting office to play a 15-year-old, and they’d say, 'How old are you?' and I said 30, they’d laugh. No one believes I'm 32...If they based (the deal) on my age, there’s an age problem in Hollywood. They bought into this, and there's something hugely wrong with it. Look at what I had to do. Someone has to put a stop to it. If I were getting a job in any other industry, do you think anyone would care how old I am or how I look?"<ref name=Variety10.16.98/>
She also stated that she changed her name partially for "security reasons" due to harassment by a stalker she had faced beginning in 1993.<ref name=Variety10.16.98/>
Weston left Felicity in the middle of the first season after her contract had expired and was not renewed. Series co-creator Matt Reeves explained during a 2021 interview with Entertainment Weekly, "People thought that we let her go because of it. None of that was true at all. The story was blown so crazy out of proportion from the perspective of our relationship with Riley. We did discover that she was not telling us the truth, but it was after she had already finished her term. When you sign somebody on as a staff writer in those days, you had a number of scripts that you signed them to do. We just put her on the show because we thought, 'Well, let's just let her do what we know she really wants to do as well, which is to be an actor.' It got turned into a scandal that I'm not sure ever was. We liked her writing. That's all."<ref name=Deadline/>
1998 - present
Weston settled in Tennessee, where she writes and performs country songs, often at the Nashville's Bluebird Café.<ref name=Deadline/> She also continues to work as an actress, voiceover artist,Template:Fact and author. Weston's first novel, Before I Go, was published in September 2006. The book earned Weston a 2007 Independent Publisher (IPPY) award for Storyteller of the Year.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Her debut novel received the 2007 New York Book Festival Grand Prize and was named Best Fiction.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
She wrote the television film Apples, Orchards & Romance, which would air in September 2023 on Great American Family. She also wrote a song for the film, and at the time, was working on her first Christmas album.<ref name=Deadline/>