Life and Career
Sumpter was born in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California to Sandy (née Johnson) and Gary Sumpter. He has a twin sister, Jessica, and two other siblings, Travis and Jennifer. His family moved to his mother's hometown, Mount Sterling, Kentucky, when he was ten months old.
Sumpter's first movie role was in the 2001 film Frailty as the young Adam Mieks seen in flashbacks (played as an adult by the film's star Matthew McConaughey). Sumpter received a Saturn Award nomination for "Best Performance by a Younger Actor" for his performance. Following that, he appeared with Danny Glover in the Showtime film Just a Dream, for which he received a Young Artist Award for "Best Performance in a TV Movie, Mini-Series or Special - Leading Young Actor". His next film was Local Boys, a family surfing drama, with Mark Harmon and Eric Christian Olsen.
In July 2002, at age 13, Sumpter was selected for the role of Peter Pan, a role traditionally played on stage by women. Sumpter did nearly all of his stunts for the film himself. To prepare, he says he practiced sword fighting as much as five hours a day, as well as training in gymnastics and lifting weights. While filming in Australia, he supplemented his training with cricket and surfing. Sumpter grew several inches while in the film's production, requiring staging tricks to retain Captain Hook's height advantage over Peter in face-to-face scenes late in the process. Producer Lucy Fisher also said that, "The window he flies out of had to be enlarged twice." Sumpter won both a Saturn and Young Artist Award for the film.
In the fall of 2004 he starred in the TV series Clubhouse as a boy who gets his dream job of working at a batboy for a New York City major league baseball team. The series was canceled by CBS after five episodes; all 11 episodes made have since been broadcast on cable/satellite channels. He then starred in Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life, a Lifetime Channel movie about a popular teenager whose life is ruined by an addiction to internet pornography.
Sumpter spent the summer of 2005 in Oregon filming the teen comedy The Sasquatch Gang (a.k.a. The Sasquatch Dumpling Gang), released in November 2006. He had a small role in the film An American Crime, which played on Showtime in 2008 before going to DVD. He appeared in an episode of CSI: Miami as the boyfriend of a girl whose parents are murdered.
He completed filming roles in the coming-of-age comedy Calvin Marshall, the family comedy You're So Cupid, Soul Surfer and Death And Cremation.
Sumpter has been co-hosting The YOBI Show, an online reality contest show, with Danielle Ryan.
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Famous quotes containing the words life and/or career:
“Thus when I come to shape here at this table between my hands the story of my life and set it before you as a complete thing, I have to recall things gone far, gone deep, sunk into this life or that and become part of it; dreams, too, things surrounding me, and the inmates, those old half-articulate ghosts who keep up their hauntings by day and night ... shadows of people one might have been; unborn selves.”
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“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)