Born on November 11th, 1979 to Matt Hickey and Shauna Cahill, Sam's childhood was a turbulent one. His father was a career soldier and, as a result, his family was forced to move frequently. His mother, a former beauty queen who'd dropped out of high school to follow Matt across the country, did the best she could with what she had but it wasn't always enough. Money was tight. Raising too young boys on the move was tough. The itinerant lifestyle eventually proved too hard on Shauna and the strain the military put on her relationship with Matt came to a head in 1990. Sam was eleven years old when his mother packed him and his brother into a rusty station wagon and drove them cross-country from Monterey to Richmond.

It was in her Virginian hometown that Shauna decided to settle down and start over. She moved her small family into her mother's house where the three of them remained for the next five years, and peddled through a variety of jobs before finding a steady one as a teller at a local bank. Young and broke, Shauna spent most of her time working and left the child-rearing to Sam's grandmother, Eliza. An old-fashioned Irish Catholic, Eliza devotedly became the disciplinary force behind her grandsons. Before they could even mutter a protest, the Hickey boys found themselves enrolled in Catholic school and sitting mass every Sunday.

For a short while, life was good. Finally granted the opportunity to stay in school long enough to make friends, Sam flourished. He'd always been a bright, brassy kid. He'd learned early on how to charm people as a survival technique. His grandmother checked his irresponsible streak and Sam eventually joined the soccer and track teams, excelled in his classes, and enjoyed his new life. His older brother, Beau, had a much harder time. Of the two brothers, it was Beau who had borne the brunt of his parents' volatile marriage and he had no interest in blending into the suburbs. He dropped out of school at 16 to join a band and moved to New York a few weeks later.

1995 was a hard year for Sam. Eliza's declining health took a turn for the worst in March and she passed away two months later. Unable to pay off the taxes, Shauna was forced to sell her mother's house. She and Sam moved into her then-boyfriend's small apartment across town, and Sam was forced to transfer schools all over again. The depression that followed his grandmother's death saw a change in his behavior. He became more reserved, and the resentment he felt towards his mother and having to live with a stranger eventually drove him out. He followed in his brother's footsteps and dropped out of school at 17. With nowhere else to go, he headed north to find Beau in New York City.

Beau welcomed his younger brother into the small studio apartment he shared with his girlfriend. Sam helped with the rent by scraping together a variety of odd jobs. Life fell into a routine. The weeks were spent working. The weekends were spent helping out with his brother's gigs. It wasn't a terrible time. Sam was saving up money to move into his own place and working as a waiter for a catering company when he was approached by a casting agent. The moment was unspectacular, a stroke of pure luck. He was on the job collecting empty champagne flutes and she thought he had a bankable face.

Sam signed with the casting agency on a whim. Save for attending auditions a few times a week, it didn't interfere much with his daily routine. He managed to land a beer commercial and a print advertisement for a small department store over the course of a year, but the rest was just a series of rejections. He was ready to call the experiment a failure when he landed the role of Shifty Powers on HBO's Band of Brothers. Despite being primarily a background character, he appeared in all 10 episodes and had another brief taste of success shortly after as the co-starring role in O, a small film about a modern twist on Shakespeare's Othello. The buzz about his potential quickly died down after that.

Sam went through a spate of TV and film roles, relatively successful but still mostly unnoticed. Still, he counted himself lucky for the steady work. Something always seemed to fall into his lap at the right time. In 2007, he landed the role of Chris McCandles in Sean Penn's adaptation of Into the Wild. The film garnered enough critical acclaim and goodwill for Sam to read for larger, more mainstream parts. Without that, Sam speculates he might have never gotten the coveted role of Captain Kirk in JJ Abrams' Star Trek reboot. "Star Trek," he says, "changed everything."

Released May 7th, 2009, Star Trek grossed $75.2M worldwide in its opening weekend alone. It would finish 7th highest grossing at the box office for the entire year and was beloved by film critics and fans alike. Buoyed by the overwhelming success, Sam was still unprepared for the explosion of attention that followed. Having always been a hellraiser and a partier, his public image suddenly began to matter. People began to care. Nevertheless, it was a good time for his career so he ignored the naysayers and finger-waggers. The dearth of roles became a deluge and he threw himself into work, ignoring the media and determined to live his life the way he always had.

After his father's death and repeat clashes with the paparazzi in 2010, Sam checked himself into rehab in 2011. He resolved to clean up his act and come to terms with his new lifestyle even though he continued to resent the attention. Feeding the media frenzy by acting out wasn't worth the collateral to his career or the franchise he'd worked so hard to help rebuild. He spent most of 2011 and 2012 under the radar to straighten out, and reappeared in 2013 for the release of Star Trek: Into Darkness as a remarkably cleaned up and grown up version of himself.

Since the second and highly successful installment of Star Trek in 2013, Sam has been working nonstop. With a good head finally screwed onto his shoulders, he's begun experimenting with the types of scripts offered to him. His recent role as Mark Schultz in Foxcatcher has already started to generate Oscar buzz and he's aiming to try his hand at more comedy soon. He is set to reprise his role as Captain Kirk next year when filming for the last Star Trek installment begins in spring.