erry Messing wasn’t exactly a child star—more like an unusually young character actor. It all started when his mother visited a psychic, who saw his future: He would do big things in showbiz. It so happened that this psychic’s side-gig was managing adolescent actors. He was eight years old when she signed him.

Commercial work came first, followed by a straight-to-video reboot—he played Pugsley in the film Addams Family Reunion, a lifelong if eccentric dream for Jerry. But his peers at private school weren’t impressed: They bullied him so mercilessly that he turned to homeschooling after the sixth grade.

The closest Jerry got to an actual American high school was the set of Freaks and Geeks, on which he played the charmingly oblivious geek's geek Gordon Crisp. Jerry was an unusual teenager. "I fit in better with adults than with people my age," Jerry told Hopes&Fears. This was true of his time on the Freaks and Geeks set: While his soon-to-be-famous castmates formed the memories they'd relate in later oral histories, Jerry spent his time talking politics with the crew members.

At 18, a great fear strikes Jerry. Acting, as a career, comes to seem unstable. What he wants now is a degree in psychology from a reputable four-year university. He settles on a school in Florida and moves there, in the process spending every penny of his life savings. Not wanting to leave college in debt, he tries for scholarships, but none come through.

Eighteen months later Jerry returns to California changed. He is wracked with self-doubt. Not so long ago he'd been thumb-wrestling between takes with Tim Curry; now, at 20, he couldn’t leave his home without shaking. And so he didn’t, for two full months.