The new adventures of Trevor Gagnon

Look! There's Trevor Gagnon. Yeah, it's him! Right over there. He's on TV!

Trevor Gagnon knows why kids at Wakefield Elementary School think it's cool for somebody to have a TV series. But now that he's back from Hollywood, where he made 13 episodes of "The New Adventures of Old Christine" with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, he's just Trevor again. Really.

He sits at a table with three classmates who didn't even watch the series when it premiered two weeks ago. They're rubbing different foods on paper towels to test the oil content.

"I'm just plain old Trevor to them," he says. "But other kids from other classes, they treat me like a movie star. Like, this kid on the playground ... he was like, 'Hey Trevor! Oh my gosh! I finally met you!' He was going nuts and stuff."

On the show, Trevor plays Ritchie, an introverted 8-year-old with a neurotically doting divorced mother. She's the kind who mortifies a kid with too many air kisses as she drops him off for school.

His comic timing and delivery equal that of actors three times his age. Former Chapel Hill resident Clark Gregg, who plays his father, calls him "weirdly professional." He gets no argument from Louis-Dreyfus.

"He is even more professional than some adults I've worked with," she said via e-mail. "He has an uncanny ability to hold for laughs, which is something a lot of actors never learn to do."

And Trevor never tries to play it cute. Cute's already taken care of -- at age 10, he's only 4-foot-1 and 52 pounds, which is why he can play younger roles.

Ask Trevor about his acting technique, and you won't get an explanation of Strasberg's method. Instead, he'll relate the advice his parents probably gave him.

"You have to pay attention, and you have to be serious when you have to be serious," he says.

When he was a kid

Trevor was 6 when he announced to his mother, Noelle Gagnon, that he wanted to be on TV.

"He's always been precocious and outgoing as a child," she says. "He's never met a stranger, you know? He's always wanted to be the center of attention."

Trevor's family had moved to Raleigh from Mendon, Mass. His father, Kevin Gagnon, had gotten a job with GlaxoSmithKline in Research Triangle Park.

Noelle started sending the Talent One agency photos of Trevor. She bugged them for weeks and finally took him through the doors and introduced him. When the agents heard him speak, they couldn't sign him up fast enough.

"They were like, 'Oh, my God, oh, my God,' " she says.

From there, Trevor auditioned for every single thing he could. Two or three months later, Noelle grabbed him out of school and raced him to Wilmington to audition for "Iron Jawed Angels" on HBO. He landed the role and went to Richmond, Va., to film the women's suffrage film. He was in a movie with Hillary Swank!

Then he got a role in "Big Fish," made from Chapel Hill writer Daniel Wallace's book. Tim Burton was the director. Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Billy Crudup and Jessica Lange were in it. Then he was in "Southern Belles" and "Loggerheads."

In February 2005, Noelle took Trevor to Hollywood for pilot season, when everybody's making pilots for series they hope will become series. They knew it could take a long time for anything to pan out.

They were out there for six weeks. Trevor auditioned for a couple of shows. He almost landed a mustard commercial -- but not quite. Then he auditioned for "Christine."

"We kept getting callbacks," Noelle says. "We kept making it to the next step -- every day was a new step. And we were just, 'Oh, my God.' I was a wreck by the end of it, it was so stressful."

Trevor says he was cooler than she was. He remembers the day he got the part.

"I bring her into the casting room, and the casting director practically jumps out of her desk and screams, 'We love your kid!' " Trevor recalls.

Trevor and Noelle lived in Hollywood from September through December. His tutor in Hollywood collected some of his schoolwork from Wakefield.

They might move out there, but Noelle says they're playing it smart.

"We are waiting until they give us the pickup order and ... how many episodes they're going to pick up," she says. "Even then, we're going to be cautious -- because things don't last nowadays, and they can't give us any guarantees, even if we go out there to film 24 [episodes] for a full season, or 22. If the ratings start to drop, they could pull us in six weeks."

That's unlikely. The ratings have been great, and critics are enthusiastic.

But even if the reverse were true, it wouldn't faze Trevor. He knows he's a good actor.

"I just try my best," he says. "When I do an audition, I use my memory and I just try to bring the lines in my head. I try to make little pictures of them sometimes. And I just try to make a good impression, you know -- try not to get too scared. Make sure you're nice and happy, as my mom always says."

He makes it sound so easy.