See Jack Run

Jack Kaeding is a movie star. Well, not a star yet. The nine-year-old from Eden Prairie portrays the young Augusten Burroughs in the new movie Running with Scissors, sharing the credits with Annette Bening, Alec Baldwin, and Brian Cox.

Jack plays the six-year-old version of the lead character, a homosexual boy who is adopted by his bipolar poet mother’s psychiatrist. Bening plays the mother; Baldwin, Augusten’s alcoholic father; and Cox, his mother’s psychiatrist. The film also stars Gwyneth Paltrow and Evan Rachel Wood as the psychiatrist’s daughters. Another newcomer, Joseph Cross, plays the teenage Augusten.

It’s Jack’s first feature film, though he’s already been in show biz for half his life, having started modeling in the Twin Cities when he was four. He auditioned for Running with Scissors’ director Ryan Murphy in January 2005. Two months later, he was in Los Angeles, filming his part. The movie opens nationwide October 27.

From what Jack’s real-life mom, Kelly Kaeding, could tell, he shot about ten or twelve scenes for the movie. She hasn’t seen the film yet, but would be surprised if any of Jack’s scenes were cut since there are three on the trailer and two more on the film’s website . Plus, there wouldn’t be a lot to cut since they needed to establish what Augusten was like growing up.

Jack himself won’t see the movie—or read the memoir on which it’s based—for many years. He says he can’t read the book until he’s eighteen. Then he looks at his mother. “Right, mom?” Maybe thirteen, he decides. Then eleven. Then ten. “Take it or leave it,” he says. She laughs. “For sure not ten,” she says.

Jack is an energetic boy with blond, sun-bleached hair, tan skin, deep blue eyes, and dimples. The second of the six Kaeding kids, he and his older sister, Jordan, became interested in modeling when they were four and five years old. While looking at the ads in the Sunday paper, the kids simply decided they wanted to be in them—and they knew precisely which ones. Jordan wanted to be in a Target ad, and Jack wanted to ride a bicycle for Toys “R” Us. The kids went to an open casting call staged by Twin Cities talent agency Caryn International, and, though Jordan quickly lost interest and never appeared in an ad, Jack started work almost immediately.

Jack’s timid brother Will, who’s now six, started modeling by tagging along on some of Jack’s shoots, and today they are competitive about their work. “If Will gets a callback, he makes sure Jack knows it when he gets in the door,” their mom says. Will accompanied Jack to his audition for an ExxonMobil commercial that ran during the 2006 Olympics and got the job. Every time the family heard the commercial’s music, they ran into the room to see Will on TV. Jack’s eight-year-old brother, Andrew, has been asked to model, but isn’t interested. His three-year-old brother, Reed, and two-year-old sister, Ryan, started modeling in the Twin Cities, but haven’t continued since the family headed to Hollywood.

The family relocated to California three months after Jack filmed Running with Scissors, in part for his dad’s new job as a senior superintendent for a homebuilding company, but also to put Jack and his siblings in a better position to be hired for acting and modeling gigs. Jack’s parents grew up in Eden Prairie and didn’t think about leaving until July 2004, when Jack won the first runner-up Child Actor of the Year Award at the International Modeling and Talent Association competition in New York City and was scouted by several agents and managers.