`When I was younger, a lot of times I did three jobs a day. Now I do about one job a month. I stopped getting as many calls because I wasn`t as cute, and I wasn`t a perfect size five any more.”
Shaela Wells, like many actresses and models, knows what aging can do to a career. After many successful years of working, she found herself over the hill-at age seven. The fourth grader waited it out, however, and now, ”Work is starting to come in again because I`m a perfect size 10.”
Shaela is one of four acting children of Naperville`s Wells household. She speaks about the ups and downs of her appearance, her size and her career with a nonchalance most people use discussing the weather.
”You can`t consider rejection personal,” mother Judy said she tells her children. ”It`s a disappointment sometimes, but you just go on to the next job. In this business, if you don`t have fun with it, you should get out of it.”
Judy, who played the cheerleading coach in the film ”Lucas,” was the catalyst for her family`s career. ”I started first, and when I had been established for almost a year, they asked me to bring the children to audition for a Bisquick commercial with me; I took all of them, and B.J. got the job and I didn`t.”
B.J., now 12, went on to do commercials for Captain Crunch (blowing bubbles with his gum while riding his bike), Burger King (the groom in ”Tom Thumb`s Wedding”) and several print ads.
”When I`m on TV, people see me and at school people will congratulate me,” said the Madison Junior High (Naperville) sixth grader. ”There are a few people who tease me, but I think it`s because they want to be a model but don`t take the initiative to be one. If someone asks me how to do it, I tell them to talk to my mom, but most of the time they don`t call her.”
Like Shaela, B.J. understands the down side of acting. ”Out of ten auditions, I might get two jobs,” he estimated. ”The biggest disappointment was when I tried for a movie and got four call backs. They were down to two, and they chose the other kid.”
Judy is one mother who doesn`t tell her kids to act their age; she noted that B.J. probably gets more work than other boys because he`s small. ”If they were looking for a five-year-old,” she said, ”he was that size when he was seven but had the attention span of a seven and could work longer. We`re required by law to have a permit and can only be on the set X amount of hours, depending on age. He`s still small, and that`s an advantage.”
Size has also been an advantage for nine-year-old Shaela and her twin brother, Stephen. ”If they`re looking for a brother and sister, it`s a shoo- in,” Judy said. ”They look a lot alike, but Stephen is taller and looks older; so he plays an older brother. They`ve done a couple of McDonalds` TV commercials together and an ad for the Home Shoppers show.”
Stephen claims playing big brother is not really acting. ”I am older,”
he insisted. ”It`s only by six minutes, but I am bigger; so I feel responsible for her. We`re good friends, except for when she bosses me around.”
The fourth acting Wells is baby Shelsea. At ten weeks old, the baby has already done print ads.
Robert Wells prefers the role of supportive husband and father. He`s a banker in Chicago, and while he enjoys seeing his family on the screen, he has no similar aspirations.
The parents place educational responsibility as a priority over acting. The schools have cooperated with time off, and the family has a rule that if grades drop, no more time will be taken out of school. Stephen claims that missing school time is never a problem. ”I just hate making up the work,” he said.
Makeup work is not the only hardship Stephen has faced as an actor. ”On one of my McDonalds` jobs, I had to eat these french fries that had gotten freezing cold,” he noted. ”They don`t taste as good as the hot ones.”
