The Orange County Register, June 24th, 2007
For months, Spencer Martin spent his afternoons in the back of the family car on the long and boring drive from his Laguna Niguel home to the production offices and casting agencies of Hollywood.
Each time the agent called with news of another audition, back into the car he’d go.
And all of that was fine, even though throughout 2006, the first year of his acting career, Spencer had yet to book a job.
All of that, except for that endless drive – did we mention it was boring with a capital B?
Sure, he could play games on his laptop computer or listen to music, but the 60 or so miles took forever to pass by.
“Sometimes if I’m really bored I just look out the window,” Spencer says, wrinkling a freckled nose at the memory.
So after an audition in late November – for a new Fox TV show at that time jokingly called “How Dumb Are You?” – Spencer decided he’d had enough.
“I told my dad on the way home that I didn’t want to do this anymore,” Spencer says in a soft rapid-fire rush of words.
His father, Doug Martin, said OK, we’ll just call your agent and let her know.
“But the next day, I got a call for a callback, so I said, ‘OK, this will be the last one,’ ” Spencer says.
• • •
By now, you may sense that Spencer Martin, now 11, isn’t one of those bratty child actors you see on TV talk shows – preternaturally self-assured, chattering like tiny grownups, a tad full of themselves.
When Spencer tells you that he’d just as soon be pogo-sticking or climbing trees or jumping off things – “I can jump off nine or 10 steps at a time,” he boasts – you believe him.
He’s a kid who likes being a kid – hanging out with his pals and his dogs, Kimba and Dasher, serving as an altar boy at St. Edward the Confessor in Dana Point, where he also attends school.
So it’s reasonable to ask how he ended up in that car on that drive.
His mom, Danielle Dearing Martin, is an actress with roles mostly in smaller TV, film and theater projects. His 13-year-old sister, Gabrielle, decided to try acting, and eventually Spencer decided the family business looked fun, too.
He won roles in a few plays, he says, but learned to look at Hollywood realistically.
“My mom told me some stuff, like one of 200 auditions you might get,” Spencer says. “And you just learn to think that if they don’t like you, it was OK, because it was just another audition.”
But what he thought would be his last audition turned into two months of callbacks.
“They’d ask us, ‘So what do you like doing when you’re at home? When you’re at school?’ ” he says. “And at other ones, they’d just give us a lot of questions and see how we did.”
In late January, his parents met him at school one day, acting all weird and excited like there was something going on, Spencer says.
“My dad pulled out a video camera, and I was thinking, ‘This is kind of random,’ ” he says, the words run together in a breathless blur. “I said, ‘What’s going on?’ And my mom said, ‘I did something big without telling you – I signed a contract for the show.’ ”
At this, Spencer pauses for a breath and shoots his mom a look that says, “I still can’t believe you did that.”
Danielle Martin laughs, maybe a little embarrassed.
“He doesn’t like surprises,” she says. “So he said, ‘Turn that thing off! I’m not even sure I want the job!’
“Doug and I were falling all over ourselves apologizing. Then he (Spencer) said, ‘Guys, I need time to process this.’ ”
• • •
As it turned out, Spencer didn’t need much time. By that night, he was getting excited, even as he worried – ever the shy kid – about the attention it would bring.
He told one or two friends, but soon it was all over school, forcing Spencer to admit that he was going on a new series – now titled “Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?”
“Rumors were going around,” says his buddy Ryan Manning. “So Mrs. Schmitt said, ‘OK, just get up in front of the class and tell them.’
“He didn’t want to,” Ryan says. “He actually asked me to tell them, but Mrs. Schmitt said, ‘No, you have to tell them.’ ”
Over the spring, Spencer missed three or four weeks of school while shooting about 20 episodes of the show, hosted by comedian Jeff Foxworthy, on which adults try to win up to $1 million by answering grade-school questions. The kids play along, with their correct answers sometimes helping the grown-ups stay in the game.
“I was really nervous because I thought I’m going to make this contestant lose for sure,” he says of his first appearance. “But I ended up helping him.”
Of course he and other kids sometimes missed answers and helped cause adults to lose, but at least twice Spencer helped contestants win $500,000, which felt great, he says.
Launched with a prime spot after “American Idol,” the show debuted with 24 million viewers, and has averaged between 9 million and 13 million since then. Yet Spencer still tried to play it down at home.
“You never would have known that he was on that show,” says Cora Schmitt, his teacher. “He was never the least bit pretentious with it. He was just Spencer.”
Which is pretty much how he got the job, according to Barry Poznick, an executive producer on the show.
“Spencer was my favorite from Day One,” Poznick says. “He is, to me, like the epitome of a kid. He’s just a real rug rat with his freckles and the way he dresses.”
• • •
Spencer’s work on the show is done now, though episodes on which he appears continue at 8 tonight and every Thursday this summer.
A few weeks ago, he and the rest of the cast attended a Los Angeles casting call for next season’s kids, an event that drew about 1,500 youngsters thrilled to see Spencer and the others.
“There were these two kids who were fourth-graders there, and their older sisters had a crush on me, they said, which was pretty weird,” Spencer says, noting the downside of fame – the giggling girls who approach in public or send him love letters with exclamation marks dotted with hearts.
“It’s kind of freaky,” he says of the attention from girls.
But he says he’s glad he did the show. Most of his money is saved for college, but he was allowed to splurge on a new laptop computer and two pet rats.
And he’s decided to stick with acting a while longer, though his grown-up goal is to be a veterinarian, a psychologist, a surgeon or an Olympic pogo-sticking medalist.
His parents say they want him to act and audition only as long as it makes him happy – and as long as it keeps him just like he is.
“He’s good with it,” Danielle Martin says. “The worst thing I can see happening is pushing him, or his whole aura or spirit changing” because of the work.
“But it’s only changed him in what I think is a good way, in that he isn’t quite as shy as he was.
“I’m biased, but he’s a really, really good kid.”
SMARTY: Spencer Martin is one of five kids who star in the Fox TV game show “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?”
