"In For The Long Run" (April 3 2006)
Written by E. Henerson for Backstage.com

Jonathan Lipnicki was barely 5 years old when he followed his older sister into an acting workshop. Big sis always came out looking happy, and Lipnicki figured he might enjoy it, too. He was right. Never mind what a kid could decide to be when he grew up; as an actor, Lipnicki quickly learned, you could pretend to be a policeman, a fireman, or an astronaut right now. The workshop led to auditions and to his first commercial for Kodak film.

"I was washing the bulldog, and that was fun," recalls Lipnicki, now 15.

Then the Lipnicki family got wind of a role for a young boy in a new film by director Cameron Crowe, starring Tom Cruise.

There figured to be hundreds of boys who would be seen for Ray, the weirdly precocious son of Renée Zellweger's character, who bonds adorably with Cruise's Jerry Maguire. Rhonda Lipnicki tried to caution her son not to get his hopes up. No problem, the 5-year-old assured her.

"That role is mine," he said. "I'm going to be Ray."

He wasn't initially cast, but Rhonda learned that the boy who won the role wasn't working out and the filmmakers wanted to recast the role. One problem: They weren't willing to re-audition any of the boys who'd previously been seen. Lipnicki's agent intervened.

"He told them, 'I'm putting my career on the line here, but you have to see Jonathan Lipnicki again, because I'm looking at Ray Boyd,' " recalls Rhonda.

"He went with his dad, because I had to go with my daughter to sleep-away camp. So I'm not hearing from them, not hearing from them. Then his father called while I was doing the laundry. He said, 'They want to know if you can fly to Arizona to meet with Tom Cruise.' So the laundry didn't get done."

And a career was born. The chemistry, as anyone who has seen Jerry Maguire can attest, was electric. Lipnicki went on to roles in The Jeff Foxworthy Show and the first two Stuart Little movies. Now he's on his school water polo team and is set to produce the documentary After School, about teachers who sleep with their underage male students.

"In the meantime, we're still going to meetings and auditions and all that stuff," he says.