Sure, the actor who gained prominence as Stifler in the American Pie series
and Wheeler in Role Models series still pops up in movies and on TV shows, but not with
the regularity or high profile he once did. Here's what happened to Seann William Scott.
In March 2011, Seann William Scott had to abandon any career momentum he'd picked up and drop
out of the Hollywood entertainment machine for a while. It came as a surprise to Scott's fans,
but as it turned out, it was absolutely necessary, because he had to get his personal life in order.
According to TMZ, the actor voluntarily checked himself
into a treatment facility to address unspecified health and personal issues. He stayed for 30 days,
then went off to film the fourth American Pie movie, American Reunion.
In the decade since his stint in rehab, Scott has never publicly
addressed what issues led to his decision to seek professional help, nor has he appeared in
any tabloid or media reports getting into trouble. He insisted to People in 2003,
"I don't really party. If I did, it would probably just be trying a new bottle of wine."
If he's trying to avoid vices or other triggers for the demons that led him to step away from
his daily life to get his head clear ten years ago, then it's probably best he avoids or limits
his time as a Hollywood player, which could mean a decreased chance of landing big roles.
In the 2010s, Seann William Scott didn't do much live-action film work.
After American Reunion, he had leading roles in just five films throughout the entire decade.
There are plenty of actors who find themselves part-time performers for whatever reason,
but for the most part, they still play the Hollywood game,
hitting the red carpet for film premieres and big events and relentlessly promoting
themselves or their affiliated products on social media. Scott, however, is not often among them.
In contrast to his usual goofball screen persona,
he's more of an actor and less of a celebrity, seemingly happy flying under the radar,
rarely seen at events or even captured by paparazzi going about his daily business.
"After I did American Pie, I bought this car and I should have saved some
of my money, because then I ended up having to work at the LA Zoo."
In the era of celebrity tabloids and the 24-hour news cycle, this otherwise respectable and
tasteful behavior and commitment to privacy could have hurt his career. If he's not seen offscreen,
that hurts his visibility. This could make audiences forget about him, and may also make
studios reluctant to cast an actor who isn't going to play the game and give their movies
free publicity with public appearances, paparazzi shots, and Instagram chatter.
Despite often portraying louts, jerks, blowhards, and fools, Seann William Scott has occasionally
been given the chance to play roles that weren't like Stifler. In 2003, for example, he co-starred
in Bulletproof Monk, a comic book adaptation and English-language vehicle for Hong Kong star
Chow Yun-Fat. A little bit of a fantasy, a little bit of a comedy, and mostly a martial arts action
movie, Bulletproof Monk might have been too many things at once to attract too big of an audience
— during its theatrical run, it earned $37 million worldwide against a $52 million budget.
Not only was it a flop with viewers, but critics didn't care for Bulletproof Monk either.
Slate's David Edelstein complained of too-quick cuts and fight scenes that were, quote, "chopped
into scores of little kicks and punches and leaps that don't cut together." Ed Gonzalez of Slant was
even harsher, calling the movie "infinitely juvenile," a slam that had to affect Scott,
who told the San Francisco Chronicle that he made the movie in the hopes that it would get,
quote, "the audience into that [more serious] aspect of what I can do." Unfortunately,
that backfired, with Scott bearing part of the blame for the movie's box office failure.
After Bulletproof Monk, Scott returned to the broad, ensemble comedy that made him famous,
playing Bo Duke in the 2005 big-screen remake of the hit television series The Dukes of Hazzard.
It made $80 million at the American box office, but it was also slammed by critics.
The Houston Chronicle called Dukes the worst film of the new millennium. It was nominated for seven
Razzie Awards, including Worst Picture. And it amassed a woeful 14 percent rating on Rotten
Tomatoes thanks to a slew of terrible reviews from publications like Time Out London — which
zeroed in on Scott, calling his performance, quote, "mildly perverted puppy-dog goofing."
In 2007, Scott got another shot at mainstream comedy with Mr. Woodcock, playing a man still
tormented by abuse from his grade school gym coach, played by Billy Bob Thornton,
who then starts dating the guy's mother, played by Susan Sarandon. Critics liked it about as much as
they did The Dukes of Hazzard, with IGN calling it "an uninspired, unfunny and irritating experience"
and DVD Town labeling it "a depressing nightmare." Further damaging Scott's bankability as a comedy
headliner was the fact that Mr. Woodcock earned a paltry $25 million at the American box office.
With the American Pie franchise well behind him, Scott got a rare chance at a dramatic,
poignant role in 2015 with Courteney Cox's directorial debut Just Before I Go. Scott
played a man going on a farewell tour of sorts before taking his own life. He told Variety,
"It was rewarding to play pretty much the antithesis of what I've done in the past.
To get a chance to play a totally different character — because he's just a good, average,
relatable guy going through obviously an awful moment in his life — was great."
Unfortunately, theatergoers and critics didn't share Scott's enthusiasm. On top of the film's
staggeringly low $10,970 total box office gross, Scott's performance was described as "tepid" and
"colorless" by Stephen Holden of the New York Times, while Justin Chang of Variety said,
"[Scott] convinces well enough as a guy who wants be put out of his misery,
and there isn't an actor here who doesn't look ready to join him."
With his big shot at comedy mixed with drama ending in disaster,
Scott hasn't had much of a chance to flex those particular creative muscles again.
Not just a conventionally attractive and familiar face, Seann William Scott also has a
memorable and distinctive voice. It's served him well in his career, helping him create
well-rounded characters in live-action movies. But Scott's sound is unique enough on its own
that he's been able to supplement his flesh-and-blood performance work — or
replace it entirely during fallow periods — with some prominent and lucrative voiceover work.
For a decade, he provided the voice of the excitable prankster possum Crash in the
animated Ice Age franchise. Scott first voiced the character in 2006's Ice Age: The Meltdown,
and reprised the role in two sequels as well as TV specials, DVD bonus shorts, and video games,
making his voice highly recognizable to a generation of children. So while his fame
may come and go, Scott's finances and legacy in children's entertainment are well secured.
At the peak of his career, Seann William Scott was a casting director's go-to actor for a high school
party boy, college jock, or aimless post-grad. Now that he's aged out of that demographic, he's
not going to be offered those parts anymore. He's so associated with his breakout role of Stifler
that filmmakers and audiences have a hard time seeing him as anything else. And Scott knows it.
In 2010, while promoting the action comedy Cop Out,
Scott told MTV News that his role as Stifler may have hurt his career as much as it helped, saying,
"I had so much fun and loved the character.I don't want to be known as that character
forever. Now I'm realizing that I probably will be known as that character forever!"
Scott himself is pretty different from Stifler,
saying in a 2015 Reddit "Ask Me Anything" that he's "a HUGE instigator of trouble,"
but the similarities between him and Stifler end there. He said,
"[T]he majority of that character I took from the friends [I] went to high school with."
In an interview with IGN, Scott categorized himself a "nerd" in high school who didn't
even consider pursuing a career in comedy when he first went to Hollywood.
"They would come up to me and be like, 'Stifler!' And when I was like,
'Not really,’ it was like I was breaking their hearts."
"You were telling them there's no Santa Claus."
Seann William Scott has largely shifted his efforts to smaller movies, indie movies,
and working just outside of the Hollywood mainstream. In 2011, he starred as Doug, a dumb
sweetheart who becomes an unlikely hockey enforcer in the modestly budgeted Canadian production Goon,
a box office flop which proved such an underground classic that it inspired a 2017 sequel.
Scott then joined the cast of Super Troopers 2, a sequel to another cult favorite that was
produced after a successful online fundraising campaign and which earned a decent $30 million
at the box office. More recently, Scott led the cast of the Blumhouse horror movie Bloodline,
where he played against type as a social worker and new dad
dealing with and committing unspeakable acts. Low-key, slightly off-the-radar,
independent films aren't necessarily going to lead to big things for Scott, but he's at least
making a living while also pursuing interesting projects and putting his acting chops to use.
Before his breakout role in American Pie, Scott did plenty of TV work, appearing on sitcoms,
in commercials, and in music videos. In the 2010s, he gave the small screen another shot. Along with
comedy heavy hitters like Chris Pratt, Adam Scott, Kumail Nanjiani, and Elizabeth Banks, Scott lent
his voice to the IFC project Timms Valley, a stop-motion animated project involving dolls
facing hilariously adult problems. Unfortunately, the show didn't get a full series order from IFC.
In 2018, Scott joined a TV production that was already in progress and beset with stress
and backstage drama. After numerous onset incidents, the producers of Fox's Lethal
Weapon fired star Clayne Crawford and brought in Scott to perform opposite Damon Wayans.
The new blood didn't save the show, with Wayans threatening to leave the series in the middle of
the season. It was a moot point, because Fox decided to cancel Lethal Weapon in May 2019.
Not only has his association with one extremely over-the-top role led to some professional
resistance for Seann William Scott, he also has to contend with being forever associated with
a franchise. To many filmmakers and filmgoers, Scott isn't just Stifler,
he's fully the "American Pie guy," part of a long-running franchise
forever tied to the late '90s and early 2000s — a very different comedy movie era.
That's going to limit the roles he's offered or allowed to play,
and Scott isn't alone in this state of affairs. It's a circumstance that his fellow American Pie
cast members have also dealt with on some level. Jason Biggs, Tara Reid,
Shannon Elizabeth, Chris Klein, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Thomas Ian Nicholas, and Mena Suvari
have similarly struggled over the past couple of decades to maintain the career momentum
and mega-fame they experienced in the wake of American Pie. Eugene Levy's doing great, though.
Seann William Scott didn't appear in a single movie or TV show in 2020. As of 2021, he's got
one project in the offing, but it's a big one. Fox ordered an American remake of This Country,
a popular BBC comic mockumentary about the quirky denizens of a small town.
Scott is in the cast as Father Joe, and the series will hit the airwaves in fall 2021.
And as long as Hollywood stays the course, as it has for years,
with pumping out reboots and sequels,
Scott is in the unique and fortunate position of being involved with several franchises.
There's always the chance that another American Pie movie will be made somewhere down the line...
"I think we're gonna, like, do another 40 American Pie movies."
"Yeah, why not, right?"
"Let's just do it until we all die."
or an Ice Age movie. Even the long-discussed and long-awaited
Seriously, Dude, Where's My Car? could enter production at any time.
Any of those could provide Scott with the right environment — as part of a big comic ensemble,
or having another actor of his caliber to play off of — to once again capture major success.
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