Jason 'Wee Man' Acuña
Jason 'Wee Man' Acuña is an actor, born 1973.
Acuna was a professional skateboarder before he was a television personality, and that order matters. The stunts that made Jackass famous were performed by people with actual board skills and a high tolerance for concrete, and he arrived with both. Born in Pisa, Italian by birth and American by career, he became one of the core cast when the MTV series launched in 2000 and has appeared in every theatrical entry since.
He has achondroplasia, a form of dwarfism, and the notable thing about his position in the group is how rarely his size functions as the punchline; in the material he is a stunt performer among stunt performers, taking the same hits. He has also hosted the skateboarding show 54321.
The credit list is a good record of how the franchise works. Alongside the numbered films sit Jackass 2.5, 3.5 and 4.5, which are the offcuts released as their own features, because the shoot generates far more usable footage than a cinema running time can hold. There is scripted work too, Little Timmy in the skate comedy Grind, Brian Savage in Behaving Badly, a voice role on Squidbillies, and small parts in History of the World: Part II and Spinal Tap II. From the 2000 series to Jackass: Best and Last, that is a stunt career measured in decades, which almost nobody manages.
Movies (12)
TV (5)
Where to start with Jason 'Wee Man' Acuña
Jackass: The Movie in 2002 is the right entry point rather than the series, because the cinema budget bought scale without changing the tone, and it remains the tightest hour and a half the group ever assembled.
Work backwards to Jackass itself if you want the raw MTV version, then forward to Jackass Number Two, which is the most inventive of the run and the one with the best ideas per minute.
Jackass Forever is the one with feeling in it, made twenty years on by men whose bodies have opinions about the plan, and Acuna is one of the few who still moves like the original. Outside the franchise, Grind is the skate comedy, Wildboyz takes the format abroad, and Ridiculousness is the low-effort daily-television afterlife.