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Jonathan Taylor Thomas was born on September 8, 1981 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, but raised in Sacramento, CA, after the age of four.. Growing up, he enjoyed the music
group Boyz II Men, and his favorite TV shows were "Roseanne" (1988) and "Grace Under Fire" (1993), but he also liked watching CNN news, to keep up to date with current events.
Before starting grade school, he was a locally popular child model. This led to national exposure and appearances in commercials for such companies as Burger King.
One of the longest reigning and
most popular teeny bopper idols of the 1990s, Jonathan Taylor Thomas first found an audience playing the son of Tim Allen on ABC's long-running, phenomenally popular sitcom Home Improvement. With his mop
of dull-blonde hair and impish grin, it is small wonder that he captured the hearts of young girls across the country.
Leaving Home Improvement to devote himself to his studies, he began to
shatter his boy-next-door stereotype with roles in gritty and challenging projects. Portraying a drug-addicted hustler in 1999's festival-screened independent "Speedway Junkie", Thomas came up
with a strong and nuanced performance in a part far different from anything he has previously played. In 2000, amid rumors of his own homosexuality, the actor unflinchingly took on the role of a gay
teenager tormented by his peers in the Terrence McNally-scripted drama "Mr. Roberts", a segment of the Showtime anthology "Common Ground".
Thomas returned to the big
screen with a turn as a menacing youth befriended by a Southern widow (Ellen Burstyn) in the independent "Walking Across Egypt" (2000) and reteamed with TV brother Zachary Ty Bryant as two of a
group of five high-school students inexplicably kidnapped in the thriller "Held For Ransom" (lensed 1999).
With help from a lucrative contract from Disney, he broke into feature films,
voicing the young Simba in The Lion King (1994). He made his live-action feature-film debut opposite Farrah Fawcett and Chevy Chase in the family comedy Man of the House (1995).
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