What's the next step after retiring from acting? If teaching others how
to pilot submarines wasn't your first — or fifteenth — guess, we don't blame you. You
won't believe what else Taran Noah Smith has been up to since his "Home Improvement" days.
Perhaps the most surprising thing Taran Noah Smith did when he grew up was quit acting,
which he decided to do at age 16 after "Home Improvement" ended. He told HNGN:
"I'm the only cast member of ["Home Improvement"]
that's kind of left the business. It's not because I didn't like it."
In fact, he said it was more about him figuring out for himself what he
wanted to do in life. Years after the show ended, he explained to Entertainment Weekly:
"It was pretty exciting to leave it behind and do other things."
"Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a duckling to glaze."
Smith's mother, Candy Bennici, explained to the Marin Independent Journal that she
actually thought her son had struggled with the show ending. She said:
"I thought that when the whole thing was ending, he had the hardest time. The adults
and the other kids had a life before the show, but his whole life as he knew it was
suddenly gone overnight. They take your ID card and you can’t go on the lot anymore.”
Quitting acting wasn't the only shocking thing Smith did as he approached adulthood: At age 17,
he married a woman who was 15 years his senior. He met his then-wife, Heidi Van Pelt, at a party
thrown by a former "Home Improvement" co-star a year before they exchanged vows. Smith told
the Marin Independent Journal that his parents weren't too happy about his new romance. He said:
"They tried to push her out of my life. But that never works with a teenager in love."
People reports that Smith's parents had actually tried to accept their strange
romance at first by letting Van Pelt stay in their home. Yet things took a turn when
Smith tried to get emancipated from them and then ran away to marry Van Pelt soon after.
Smith then took his parents to court at age 17 for control over his trust fund.
He wasn't allowed to touch the $1.5 million that he made from acting until he turned 18
due to Coogan's Law. Yet his parents had access to it, and he told People
that they were using it to pay their own bills, including their home's mortgage. He
even accused them of forcing him to continue acting so they could live off him. He said:
"I was basically supporting my entire family."
Smith had hoped getting emancipated from his parents would give him and Van Pelt control
of his money. However, the judge ruled in his parent's favor and Smith continued to blast
them in the press, calling his mother a "shark" in his interview with People,
and claiming that he couldn't trust them. Ultimately, they became estranged.
Bennici denied that they used their son's money,
and suggested it was Van Pelt who was after it. She explained to the Marin Independent Journal:
"We couldn't have touched it if we wanted to. We were trying to protect it."
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Smith and Van Pelt went through a messy divorce six years
later. What made matters worse, though, was that his house was foreclosed on,
then completely trashed. His lawyer explained to TMZ:
"You can thank his gold-digging ex-wife for the debacle he's in."
ABC News reported that the couple shares a son, Nolan Eric Smith,
but there isn't much information about him or their custody situation. Smith did, however,
tell Marin Independent Journal that his parents were finally ready to come around
to him and Van Pelt's relationship when he told them they had split. He admitted:
"At the end of that, I realized I had made a mistake."
Taran Noah Smith faced another setback at 28 years old when he was arrested for driving
under the influence and drug possession in 2012. According to TMZ, police in Los
Angeles found Smith in a Honda Accord that was parked in front of a fire hydrant. Officers then
smelled marijuana and discovered him to be under the influence. Smith was placed under
arrest and later pleaded guilty to the drug possession charge but no contest to the DUI.
Smith was placed on three years probation and had to complete two programs:
One for the DUI, and another focused on deterring drug use. Smith, however,
has claimed in past interviews that he didn't actually fall into drugs like many other child
stars did. During a joint interview he did with Zachery Bryan for Access Hollywood, he said:
"We got really lucky ... First of all, we're still here, and we didn't have
to deal with too much ... any crazy drug problems or anything like that."
Keep in mind, Smith was only in possession of marijuana, which is now legal in many states.
However, he was once accused of a far more serious narcotic crime
in 2019 when witnesses thought he was smuggling drugs into the U.S.
through a submarine he was piloting. He explained to KSBW Action News 8:
"No, we are not smuggling drugs, we are not attacking the U.S.,
we are just all Californians here having a good time."
Yep, you heard that right. Turns out, Smith had taken a job teaching people
how to pilot submarines for a training company. He told KSBW Action News 8:
"We want to be able to help people experience what
the true beauty and wonder that is under the ocean at all times."
The actor grew up living on a boat, which is probably why as an adult he seemed to be drawn to
maritime work. In addition to teaching people how to pilot submarines, he also captained a charter
sailboat. Before that, he worked with water in a different way as an engineer, teaming up with
his father to build environmentally-friendly water purifiers that were then used by the
military. He discussed that and other similar projects with Access Hollywood in 2018, saying:
"I've been working on a couple different engineering teams,
building machines that make water ... recently one that pulls water out of the air."
Smith has always made it a point to give back after he found success as
a child star. According to the Hallmark Channel, the actor has been involved in
various charities throughout his career, including the National MS Society and
the Make-a-Wish Foundation. He's also done events for Sail with the Stars,
as well as the MS Read-A-Thon and a coat drive for Kids "R' Us, to name just a few.
Smith's mother, Candy, gave advice on how parents of celebrity children should approach doing
charity work on the "Cooper Talk" podcast, since she had done so much with her son. She explained:
"Make sure what they're asking your child to do is something that
they can do because sometimes we ran into a couple situations like that."
She then gave the example of a skiing event for the Special Olympics,
which turned out to be way too challenging for Smith.
As an adult, Smith continued to do community service and
even spent six months in Asia doing disaster relief work. He told HNGN:
"We went into the Philippines after the most massive typhoon on record hit in late 2013,
and we helped set up a resource center based around a maker space."
Despite all the trouble Smith had with his parents during his late teen years,
they were able to put those problems behind them once he became an adult. As previously mentioned,
Smith had sued his mother and father in 2001 for access to his trust fund at age
17. While things got pretty ugly in the press, Smith later downplayed it to HNGN, saying:
"There was definitely some teenage angst-driven strife between us,
but it's common between parents and children."
He went on to blame the media for painting it worse than it was,
and pointed out how they've been a "happy family" for a while.
Smith's mother, Candy, reiterated that other people were involved in their estrangement,
including entertainment TV hosts John Tesh and Leeza Gibbons. She blasted them in her book,
"Stardom Happens: Nurturing Your Child in the Entertainment Business," for
creating a "nightmare" situation by asking Smith and other child actors
questions about their contracts. Bennici also seemingly blamed Smith's ex-wife,
Heidi, by suggesting that she preyed on him. She wrote:
"Thankfully, it's all over now,
and an older and much wiser Taran is happily reunited with our family again."
Smith also told the Marin Independent Journal that he had realized with age that his parents
weren't trying to harm him, but instead were keeping his money safe. He said:
"I apologized to them, and they were very forgiving and apologized, too."
Smith's adult life might not currently include acting, but that doesn't mean that he's ruled
out the possibility of ever returning to the screen. We're talking about a "Home
Improvement" reboot or reunion specifically, since Smith said on the "Cooper Talk" podcast
that he really misses the people he used to work with on that show. He explained:
"I just really enjoyed that process of making something we were proud
of and making it with that large group of people."
Smith was lucky enough to reconnect with some of his former "Home Improvement" cast members in 2011
for a photoshoot for Entertainment Weekly. He seemed to have enjoyed it quite a bit,
comparing it to a "high school reunion." As previously mentioned,
he appeared on Access Hollywood in 2019 with his former co-star Zachery Ty Bryan,
where they happily reminisced about their time on the TV series together playing on-screen brothers.
Additionally, the show's star, Tim Allen, has claimed he's interested in a "Home Improvement"
reboot, saying in 2022 that it should be centered around his character's sons on the show.
"Hey! Hey!"
Allen told E!:
"What I'd love to see is those boys grown up — what they're
doing grown up. I think that'd be an amazing piece of television."
While Smith is probably still best known to the public as the little kid from "Home
Improvement," it's clear he's all grown up now and became quite an accomplished adult.