From fast food commercials to sitcom star, Harvard and beyond,
former teen heartthrob Jonathan Taylor Thomas' path has been nothing if not unexpected.
Jonathan Taylor Thomas was born Jonathan Taylor Weiss on September 8th, 1981,
in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. In 1986, his parents Claudine Gonsalves and Stephen Weiss moved him
and his older brother, Joel, to Sacramento, California. The brothers' parents later divorced,
after which Jonathan and Joel were largely raised by their mother, according to The Advocate.
The young Jonathan got interested in performing early, as his mother told
People, and by the early '90s, he began doing print modeling,
landing TV commercials, and appearing on his first-ever TV series, The Bradys.
"You can get one of your favorite heroes in a half-shell every time you buy a Kids Club Meal!"
It was the early '90s when he met Deborah Barylski, a casting director auditioning kids
for a made-for-TV movie called Guess Who's Coming for Christmas. While he didn't get the part,
the casting director would keep him in mind for something much more significant.
In 1991, ABC was casting three school-age boys to play Tim Allen's sons in a new
comedy called Home Improvement. According to Premiere Magazine, casting director Deborah
Barylski thought of the 9-year-old actor for the part, which he nailed. Richard Frank,
head of Disney television at the time, even said, "That kid's gonna be a star."
Thomas did become a star, although not right away. The sitcom's initial success was due to Allen's
comedic talent. By the start of the show's third season, there was trouble. Premiere reports that
the boys, played by Thomas, Zachery Ty Bryan and Taran Noah Smith, called out sick and reportedly
requested a salary increase from $8,000 to $25,000 per episode and more on-set comforts.
Disney wouldn't budge, and the boys returned to the set the next day. While the magazine
referred to the incident as a 'PR debacle,' the show's executive producer at the time,
Carmen Finestra, noticed Thomas getting extra attention that season, saying,
"That's when I started to hear, 'Boy, that middle kid, I like him.'"
Despite the reported incident, Thomas has fond memories of his time on the show, telling People,
"The best part was being there, laughing with Tim Allen."
Jonathan Taylor Thomas' role as Randy on Home Improvement brought
his career to new heights. By the start of the show's fourth season,
he had finished a gig as the voice of young Simba in Disney's The Lion King, leading to
other film roles in such family-friendly fare as Man of the House, Tom & Huck, and Wild America.
It didn't take long for him to become a teen heartthrob, with the Los Angeles Times
noting that Thomas would receive five huge boxes of fan mail every week. By this time,
he was featured in essentially every teen magazine imaginable.
"The 14 year-old says there's only one downside to being a poster boy:
trying to answer the mountains of mail sent from Jonathan's adoring young fans."
However, he didn't let the fame go to his head,
telling the LA Times he was careful of whom he associated with;
"You have to make sure they're not just friends with you because of who you are."
In a 2013 interview with People,
the actor reflected on those early days of his career, saying,
"I never took the fame too seriously. It was a great period in my life,
but it doesn't define me. When I think back on the time, I look at it with
a wink. I focus on the good moments I had, not that I was on a lot of magazine covers."
While Jonathan Taylor Thomas was largely touted as Hollywood's golden child throughout the mid-'90s,
he had professional aspirations outside of acting, telling the LA Times in 1994,
"Show business is something that I'm pretty familiar with,
but I think I want to write, direct and basically do it all."
Thomas elaborated, explaining that gaining experience as a young actor
on a TV show served as an excellent launchpad for a future in directing.
"Being able to see this firsthand is the best experience you can have,
unless you're the son of Steven Spielberg. I'm only thirteen: I can learn a lot between
now and when I'm actually old enough to be in the [Directors Guild of America]."
In the '90s, Jonathan Taylor Thomas was often thought of as wise beyond
his years. Premiere Magazine's Christopher Connelly even likened him to a 40-year-old
man inside a teenage boy's body. His favorite pastime was fishing,
and he often made insightful comments in interviews uncommon for an actor his age.
It's no surprise then that the actor was focused on going to college. Despite his
Hollywood success, he was aware that "entertainment was a fickle business,"
as he told People in a 2000 interview. According to the publication, he visited many prestigious
colleges and universities, including Harvard, Yale, Oxford, and Northwestern, where he was
interested in studying theater and possibly history. His mother agreed, telling People,
"For both my sons, a minimum of a college education was important."
For a young actor, Thomas was keenly aware of the pitfalls of fame, telling Premiere Magazine,
"The industry is neurotic and weird, and so when I go home and I play basketball
with my friends. I'm not Jonathan Taylor Thomas. I'm just Jonathan."
In 1998, Jonathan Taylor Thomas surprised Home Improvement fans when he left the
series to enroll full-time at a private Los Angeles high school and prepare for
college. Still, his fans assumed he would return for the series finale,
so they were shocked when he didn't. The most upset was reportedly his onscreen dad,
played by Tim Allen. An April 1999 report in Star Magazine alleged Allen was angry, saying,
"... [It was] clear he was furious that Jonathan
decided not to show up for the show — or the farewell party."
The article alleged that Thomas likely skipped the final episode to avoid Allen,
who reportedly did not hide his irritation toward Thomas when he
returned for the Christmas episode. The two would, however, go on to patch things up.
Thomas didn't completely leave Hollywood behind — he just became more selective about his roles. In
2000, Thomas starred in the Showtime movie Common Ground, in which he played a small-town teen
bullied for his sexual orientation. Elaborating on his character with The Advocate, he said,
"He's very driven, very smart, and he just wants to be accepted. [...] He doesn't want
to let other people's hatred and insecurities prevent him from being the best he can be."
Thomas' role in the film Speedway Junky
further helped him escape his comfort zone. Thomas explained,
"I didn't do these pieces to change my image. I did them
for me. I had an attachment to these characters."
Thomas didn't completely say goodbye to the small screen after going to college. He appeared in an
episode of Ally McBeal in 2000 and lent his voice to six episodes of The Wild Thornberrys between
2000 and 2001. Thomas worked on the Christmas movies The Tangerine Bear: Home in Time for
Christmas! and Timothy Tweedle the First Christmas Elf, as well as a 2003 episode of The Simpsons.
In 2002, he began a recurring role on Smallville. In 2004,
he played Jeremy on several episodes of 8 Simple Rules; and in 2005,
he appeared on an episode of Veronica Mars — his last on-screen appearance for quite some time.
A March 2007 issue of Columbia's student newspaper shared that the actor was taking
history classes there under his real name, Jonathan Taylor Weiss, and was spotted at
the nearby campus of Barnard College. He had declined their requests for an interview.
After that, Thomas chose to attend Harvard University before graduating in 2010 from Columbia
University. He also enjoyed a stint abroad at St. Andrew's University in Scotland. In a rare
2013 interview with People, he explained why he gave up Hollywood for the Ivy League, saying,
"I'd been going nonstop since I was 8 years old. I wanted to go to school,
to travel and have a bit of a break. To sit in a big library amongst books and students,
that was pretty cool. It was a novel experience for me."
Despite missing the Home Improvement series' finale in 1999, he did reunite with his
former cast members 12 years later in a reunion photo shoot for Entertainment Weekly. Patricia
Richardson, who played his former on-screen mom Jill Taylor, said she even invited former onscreen
sons to her house afterward, where they all had a great time catching up. Richardson recalled,
"You know where you can pick up and it feels like no time has passed at all? And at the same time
you look at them and say, 'How can you possibly be that age because that makes me way old!'"
While Richardson had seen Ty Bryan and Smith at a TV Land reunion in 2009,
she hadn't seen Thomas since the '90s.
Thomas, for his part, explained his time away from the spotlight, saying,
"I didn't have any sort of big gripes. I just wanted to experience other things,
see what direction life was going to take me. I still have a passion for TV,
so I could see myself working in it."
Fans were in for an even bigger treat when Jonathan Taylor Thomas guest starred on Tim
Allen's comedy series Last Man Standing in 2013, his first TV role in eight years. In the episode,
Thomas plays John Baker, a restaurant owner interested in Allen's TV daughter, Kristin.
"Mike Baxter. Man, you look familiar."
As Allen revealed to Yahoo, Thomas agreed to the guest appearance after spending
months on the Last Man Standing set shadowing the show's director,
John Pasquin, who was also a director on Home Improvement. Thomas ended up
returning for three more episodes through 2015, as well as directing a few episodes.
Thomas has also tried his hand at writing, with his former Home Improvement co-star
Patricia Richardson sharing in a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" session that he had teamed up with his
former co-star and TV brother, Zachery Ty Bryan, on a project she described as "a really wonderful
pilot that is sort of R rated." She added that the two were "shopping it around town."
In a 2018 episode of Access Live, Ty Bryan,
along with former TV brother Taran Noah Smith, shared that he and Thomas were
indeed working on a project and that they were in talks with actor Macaulay Culkin.
While we may have heard little from Jonathan Taylor Thomas apart from some of his creative
projects and board work, we were given something of an update on the actor. In 2021,
he was photographed in Los Angeles. As Entertainment Tonight pointed out,
this marked the first time the star was photographed out in public in LA in eight years.
Prior to that, TMZ reported spotting him outside the Arclight Cinemas in Hollywood,
after a 2013 Q&A session for The Lion King. Thomas' name also came up on a
Reddit post in 2016, with one user alleging that Thomas frequented a local bar, saying,
"Haven't seen him in awhile but I've talked to him a couple times
in passing. He always seemed a bit sad and distant from everyone."