I have a very, very big fear of being a stage parent," he says. And they're now parents to four-year-old son Indigo "Indy" Barreto Strong, who shows what Rider calls a "terrifying" theatrical streak and is already eager to learn how to do spit takes. They married at an Oregon summer camp, unintentionally on the same 2013 weekend as Danielle Fishel's wedding (Savage attended Fishel's Friedle went to Strong's). After meeting actress and filmmaker Alexandra Barreto on the set of their short-lived WB show Pepper Dennis in 2006, he asked her to marry him in 2012 in a manner the poets and Nicholas Sparks would envy: He proposed in the pouring rain under the redwood trees at his parents' house with an engagement ring he designed and made himself. If you're still reading this article purely in the hopes that Strong could be your soulmate, here’s the part where your dreams get dashed. "And now that we're all so freaking old, I can look around and be like, wow, these guys are huge influences on my life in so many ways." "I spent a lot of my life taking these friendships for granted and these people for granted," he says. After years of fighting fans' assumptions that he, Savage, Fishel, and Friedle are all best friends in real life, Strong is finally coming to terms with the fact that they are actually really, really close. Something he finds easier: reuniting with his former co-stars. I hate to say it, but it was really hard going back and doing Girl Meets World." "There are things in the works, one of which would involve me acting again, and not really playing Shawn Hunter, but also not not playing Shawn Hunter," he says. The series was canceled in 2017 after three seasons, but it afforded Strong 18 new directorial credits, and he admits there’s still a chance he could step back into Shawn's shoes in a more meta way. "I knew that playing Shawn again was going to be the final nail in the coffin of ever doing anything else as an actor," he says. Instead, he made a deal: He would reprise Shawn Hunter for seven episodes, if he could also be allowed to direct some with his brother. "I didn't drink or do drugs, but every woman I dated was over 20, every friend I had was older, and I would literally go in disguise when I didn't want to deal with it." So, by the time I was 16, I was living and functioning as an adult," he says. "I would always gravitate toward people who had no idea who I was, and when Boy Meets World was on the air that just meant anybody over 18. He also sought new ways to cope with the fame he'd come to loathe. Spoiler alert: Strong didn't quit the show, but he did move into his own Downtown LA apartment at 16, a risky change that somehow salvaged that previously precarious relationship with his mom. "I needed to be told that my parents were going to love me no matter what." Every young kid needs to hear that, but especially when you're a child actor in this position, where your career starts to take on a life of its own, and you see that it's helping everybody's lives," he says. "It showed me that my parents would love me, even if I failed at this. Strong says that supportive, financially ill-advised declaration from his dad completely changed his life. ( The Secret World of Alex Mack's Larisa Oleynik co-starred as Young Cosette.) But mom Lin sensed her sons were destined for brighter lights, so she took Rider and Shiloh to Los Angeles, where they both quickly landed a handful of television roles. His woodland performances soon led to stints as a kid magician at local birthday parties, and eventually Strong made his professional acting debut at age 9, playing Gavroche in a San Francisco theater production of Les Miserables. I think for a lot of my friends, my house was a safe space where ideas could be challenged, and everyone was treated like an adult no matter how old you were." "My brother and I ran around the woods all day making our own movies, and there were always big dinners and big discussions where everyone was invited. "It's sort of this magical place," Strong says. His father's honest-to-god birth name is King Arthur Strong, and his back-to-lander parents raised him and his older brother, Shiloh, in an idyllic house they built themselves out of redwood trees in Northern California's Sonoma County. It should come as no surprise that someone blessed with the name Rider Strong, perfect for the stage or X-rated screen, sprouted from a family rife with creativity.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |