Jesse Plemons, Mister Kirsten Dunst himself, wasn’t always the charismatic sex icon we know today who steals scenes in films like Game Night and the upcoming I’m Thinking of Ending Things. The preternaturally fascinating actor was once a preternaturally fascinating child actor, and as he told the New York Times in a profile published today, the world just wasn’t ready for that weird, mysterious energy coming from a kid. According to the Times, “As a young performer, Plemons would fly from his hometown Mart, Tex., to Los Angeles for auditions. He lacked the over-the-top, pixie-stick enthusiasm of his child-actor brethren, and he remembers a low-key reading for the Disney Channel that left the casting director ‘genuinely confused and almost worried,’ he said.” Picture a young Jesse Plemons, auditioning for Even Stevens or something, being so low-key that he left a casting director shaken and upset. The power he has.

If Jesse Plemons’s child actor past is news to you, here are some examples. He played a boy named Tommy Harbor who taunts James Van Der Beek in Varsity Blues:

He played a kid named Ox in Like Mike:

And of course, who could forget the time he played “Ray, the Trailer Bully” in something called When Zachary Beaver Came to Town:

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