Riley Weston (born August 25, 1966) 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
<blockquote>"...she changed her name to Riley Elizabeth Weston (she declines to give her real surname but says her birth name is Kimberlee)" — Los Angeles Times</blockquote>
Weston graduated from Arlington High School outside of Poughkeepsie.
Career
Early work
<blockquote>"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</blockquote>
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. The deception was assisted by her slight build, at tall and weighing .
<blockquote>"...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."</blockquote>
In 1998, she began drafting screenplays and marketing herself to television studios as a recent high school graduate. 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. 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. Series co-creator Matt Reeves cast her as a teenage character in one episode. 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.
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: Her debut novel received the 2007 New York Book Festival Grand Prize and was named Best Fiction.
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.