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“But my message to people with or without a condition is the fact that you can still do anything you set your mind to. You just have to do it in a slightly different way than other people.” Shaffer is just 4’8” tall with fragile bones, but that hasn’t stopped his success.

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He is named after Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. He was born in Santa Clarita, California. He was diagnosed with osteogenesis imperfecta, which causes fragile bones due to a type 1 collagen defect. He experienced an increased risk of long bone fractures, bone weakness and scoliosis as a child. “It’s technically called a disability, but I don’t see it in any way disabling [me]. I’m able to do all the things I really want to do, just a little differently and more carefully.”

Career

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He fell into the business of acting. He always loved reading storybooks aloud with his mother and playing character voices. “My mom thought I might be good for voiceover. She thought I had a cute voice, so maybe I could do a cartoon or something. And while we were looking into that, we also thought I should get into theater acting, so I tried it and the first audition I went on, I booked it. And it kind of just snowballed from there.”

They met with a manager and signed him on because he was impressed with him. The manager’s assistant sent him on an audition for an episode of The Class on accident. He nailed the audition. For months later, he appeared on a series of television series and soap operas. He made his film debut with a cameo in Leaving Barstow and also with Will Smith in Hancock.

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His big break came in 2009 when he was cast as Brick Ishmael Heck on The Middle. His small size was an advantage as he was playing a kid that was five years younger than him. “Being on the show has been and still is such an amazing experience for me,” Atticus said during a 2015 interview. “To be honest, it will always feel surreal for me. It is a surreal life living on a television series set and especially when I go out in public. I have people who recognize me… and I still think to myself, ‘Uh, why?’ Then, hello… it sets in that they are fans of the show.”

He also has been a voice actor for Super Buddies, The Lion Guard and Frankenweenie. He also has voiced the Fox in Home: Adventures with Tip & Oh as well as Dennis in Star vs. The Forces of Evil. “The animation, the people that you get to work with and the fun that you get to have in the booth when you’re bouncing off of each other, doing these different voices. It is phenomenal.”

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Personal Life

He was recognized at the 2010 Media Access Awards with the Diversity Award for an Actor with a Physical or Emotional Disability.

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He has been homeschooled his entire life by his mother.

He enjoyed reading books about history as well as the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. He enjoys shows such as American Pickers, Pawn Stars and Storage Wars. When talking of his future plans, he says: “I would like to be able to go to college, enroll in film school and study to become a director and writer,” he admitted. “It would be interesting to take things behind the camera and become the narrator of a story as opposed to the character in the story.” He currently lives in Acton, California.

He is a devout Christian and has a daily Bible study with his mother. He was baptized in 2015 and has been an avid fan of Christian bands. He also has official Twitch and YouTube video gaming pages as atticusshaffervlog, which was announced in December 2019. He enjoys playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and The Long Dark among other video games too.