A former child actor who was best known for playing a young guitarist in the 2003 Jack Black movie School of Rock has been arrested for a crime that fits his most famous role: serially stealing guitars.
Joey Gaydos Jr. — who played young guitarist Zack, aka “Zack Attack,” in Richard Linklater’s movie when he was 12-years-old — was arrested this week in Florida for the fourth time in five weeks for a series of thefts in which he stole expensive guitars from music stores. Per TMZ , Gaydos, 27, would ask to test out guitars, walk out of the stores with them without paying, and then pawn them off in order to support a drug habit.
Among the guitars taken by the former actor, per the report, were a Les Paul Epiphone Prophecy, a Fender Stratocaster, and a Gibson Les Paul, all worth hundreds of dollars or more. He’s also accused of stealing an amplifier.
School of Rock , per his IMDb page, was Gaydos’ only acting credit, although a 2016 Hello Giggles post described him as an “actual rock god” on the basis of some Facebook photos of an adult Gaydos playing guitar.
The story also said that the ex-actor was playing at the time with a band called Stereo Jane, and linked to a YouTube video of the band performing the Stone Temple Pilots song “Plush,” as a tribute to that band’s frontman, Scott Weiland, who passed away in late 2015. The band’s YouTube channel hasn’t posted anything new in two years, however.
School of Rock star Joey Gaydos Jr., aka Zack-Attack, has been arrested in Florida for stealing guitars and an amp: https://t.co/0gJtDxZGXr pic.twitter.com/esCp0hHbnY
— CONSEQUENCE (@consequence) March 5, 2019
School of Rock , which came out in October of 2003, has had quite a long shelf life. A Broadway musical adaptation, written by Andrew Lloyd Webber with a book by Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes, made its debut in 2015, was nominated for four Tonys, and ran until it closed in January, although a touring production has run since 2017.
In addition, a television adaptation, called The School of Rock , ran for three seasons on Nickelodeon, wrapping up in 2018. The show, set in Austin, starred Tony Cavalero in the Jack Black role.
In a similar situation of a former child actor being arrested for something that resembles the role he once played, actor Joshua Jackson, who is a former star of the Mighty Ducks movies, was arrested for drunkenly assaulting a security guard at a hockey game in Raleigh, North Carolina, People reported in 2002. Jackson, who was 24 at the time, had a reported blood alcohol level of 0.14 percent, police told the magazine.