This page uses content from the Freddie Prinze Jr. biography page on the English version of Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. This list of authors can be seen in the page history. Rotten Tomatoes disclaims any and all warranties as to the accuracy or reliability of the content.

Freddie James Prinze, Jr. (born March 8, 1976) is an American actor, perhaps best known for his leading roles in teen-oriented films.

Biography

Early life

Prinze was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Katherine Elaine Cochran (a real-estate agent) and Freddie Prinze, an American actor and comedian who died in 1977, after Elaine left him and filed a restraining order against him. Prinze was just 10 months old at the time. His father's death was originally termed a suicide but later ruled an accident, as he was under the influence of Quaaludes. Prinze's paternal grandfather was German [1] and his paternal grandmother was Puerto Rican; he was raised a Roman Catholic [2] and embraces his Puerto Rican heritage [3].

Prinze grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Puerto Rico. He learned about Spanish and Puerto Rican culture from his paternal grandmother's Puerto Rican family. He showed an interest in acting from an early age and attended La Cueva High School in Albuquerque, which he's described in interviews as a painful experience. Having an interest in drama, he became a member of the Albuquerque Children's Theatre and the Duo Drama Company. After graduating high school in 1994, he moved to Los Angeles and began auditioning for television roles.

Career

Prinze was cast in a guest role on the ABC TV series Family Matters in 1995. He then appeared on a few special programmes and made-for-TV movies, before making his motion picture debut in To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday in 1996.

In the following years, Prinze had a great deal of success appearing in youth-oriented movies. I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and its sequel, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998), made him well-known among teenage audiences and his first leading role, the romantic comedy She's All That (1999), was very successful at the box office, grossing $63 million [4] in the United States.

Subsequently, Prinze had leading roles in Wing Commander (1999), Down to You (2000), Boys and Girls (2000), Head Over Heels (2001) and Summer Catch (2001), most of which were generally disliked by critics [5] and had moderate box office performances [6]. In 2000, he was named one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People in the World".

In 2002, he played "Fred Jones" in the live film version of the popular cartoon, Scooby-Doo, and repeated the role in the 2004 sequel, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. He guest starred on the popular NBC show, Friends, as a sensitive male nanny named Sandy. He also appeared as "Donny Crane," Denny Crane's son, on Boston Legal.

Prinze starred in his own television sitcom, titled Freddie. The sitcom is said to represent some actual events from his life. The show lasted one season (fall 2005 - spring 2006) before being canceled in May 2006.

Personal life

Prinze married actress Sarah Michelle Gellar on September 1, 2002 in Jalisco, Mexico, south of Puerto Vallarta. The couple met several years beforehand, while filming I Know What You Did Last Summer [7] but started dating in 2000 and were engaged in April 2001.

Prinze is trained in several forms of martial arts and considers tap dancing and collecting comic books his hobbies. He is also an avid soccer fan and supports the team Arsenal F.C..

An avid fan of East Asian cinema, Prinze received a Katana from Gellar in 2004 that she bought in Japan while filming The Grudge.

Selected filmography

See also

• List of famous Puerto Ricans

External links

Interviews

• Jam! Movies interview (October 5, 2005)
• Hispanic Magazine interview (September, 2005)
• collection of interviews at ILoveFreddie.com

Websites

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