Arjay Smith
Arjay Smith is an actor, born 1983.
The title role on a Nickelodeon series is a strange thing to carry out of your teens. Arjay Smith played the lead on The Journey of Allen Strange from 1997, and it is still the credit that gets recognised, which left him the difficult job of working once he was no longer the kid.
He mostly has. The Day After Tomorrow (2004) put him in a studio disaster picture as Brian Parks; Be Kind Rewind (2008) gave him Manny in a comedy built out of homemade remakes; Vacancy 2: The First Cut ran him through a horror sequel the same year. Wikipedia notes a turn as the terrorist Laurent Dubaku in the seventh season of 24, which is about as far from children's television as an actor can be sent.
The steadier work has been the second chair. Two jobs gave him real screen time: Max Lewicki on Perception and James Murray on The Rookie, the kind of part that only looks easy because he refuses to make a meal of it.
The rest is the honest texture of a working television actor. Single appearances on Malcolm in the Middle, The Bernie Mac Show, Three Rivers and The Guest Book, a sheriff's voice in Calls, and an early film credit in Toothless (1997) that predates the show he is known for by nothing at all.
Movies (5)
TV (8)
Where to start with Arjay Smith
Perception is the practical starting point, because it is the only place in this catalog where you get him weekly, in scenes long enough to judge. Max Lewicki is a supporting role written to absorb someone else's chaos, and he plays it without ever pulling focus.
Nostalgia belongs to The Journey of Allen Strange, and it holds up about as well as late-1990s Nickelodeon ever does, which is to say it is charming and cheap. The Rookie is the current one and the easiest to sample.
For films, The Day After Tomorrow is the one you have already seen without registering him, Be Kind Rewind is the good-hearted oddity worth an evening, and Calls is the genuine curiosity here, an audio-first anthology where he exists purely as a voice on a phone line.