Freddie Prinze, Jr.

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Freddie Prinze, Jr.
Freddie Prinze, Jr., April 2007
Born	Freddie James Prinze March 8, 1976 (1976-03-08) (age 32) Los Angeles, California, USA
Years active	(1995 - present)
Spouse(s)	Sarah Michelle Gellar (2002-present)
Awards won Golden Globe Awards Mr. Golden Globe (1996)

Freddie James Prinze, Jr. (born March 8, 1976) is an American actor. He became known during the late 1990s and early 2000s, after starring in several Hollywood films aimed at teenage audiences, including I Know What You Did Last Summer and its sequel, as well as She's All That, and Scooby-Doo. Prinze, Jr. also starred in a television sitcom, Freddie.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 3 Personal life 4 Filmography 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Early life

Prinze, Jr. was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Kathy Elaine Cochran (née Barber), a real estate agent, and Freddie Prinze, an actor and comedian^[1] who killed himself in 1977 after Kathy had left him and had filed a restraining order against him (Prinze, Jr. was 10 months old at the time). Prinze, Jr.'s father was of Puerto Rican, German^[2] and Jewish^[3][4] descent. In a 1999 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Prinze, Jr. stated that his mother is of English, Irish and Native American ancestry (adding that "My grandma and grandpa, who raised me for the first few years, were straight-up English and Irish");^[5] in a 2007 interview, however, Prinze, Jr. described his mother as coming from an Italian American family.^[6] Prinze, Jr. was raised Roman Catholic^[7] and embraces his Puerto Rican heritage.^[8][6] He grew up in Albuquerque and New Mexico, as well as spent summers in Puerto Rico,^[6] where he learned about Spanish and Puerto Rican culture from his Puerto Rican paternal grandmother.^[9] He speaks fluent Spanish and Italian.^[6] Prinze, Jr. showed an interest in acting from an early age and attended La Cueva High School in Albuquerque. After graduating in 1994, Prinze, Jr. moved to Los Angeles to audition for television roles.^[10]

[edit] Career

Prinze, Jr. was cast in a guest role on the ABC TV series Family Matters in 1995. He then appeared on a few special programs and made-for-TV movies, before making his motion picture debut in To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday in 1996. In subsequent years, Prinze, Jr. experienced much 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^[11] in the United States.

Subsequently, he 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^[12] and had moderate box office performances.^[13] 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 starred in both Scooby-Doo movies alongside his wife, Sarah Michelle Gellar. He guest starred on the popular NBC show, Friends, as a sensitive male nanny named Sandy. He also appeared as Donny Crane, a character believed to be Denny Crane's son in the ABC legal dramedy Boston Legal. Prinze, Jr. starred in his own television sitcom, titled Freddie. The sitcom is said to depict some actual events from his life. The show lasted one season (fall 2005 - spring 2006) before being canceled in May 2006. He guest starred on the George Lopez Show for a crossover with Freddie.

[edit] Personal life

In the mid-1990s, Prinze, Jr. dated actress Kimberly McCullough for more than three years.^[14] He married actress Sarah Michelle Gellar on September 1, 2002, in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, located at the southwest of México. The couple met several years beforehand, while filming I Know What You Did Last Summer,^[15] but started dating in 2000 and were engaged in April 2001. In 2007, for their fifth year of marriage, Sarah legally changed her name to Sarah Michelle Prinze.^[16][17]

Prinze Jr. is trained in several forms of martial arts, and enjoys tap dancing and collecting comic books. He is an avid soccer fan and supports the team Arsenal F.C., and is a fan of East Asian cinema. Prinze received a katana from Gellar in 2004 that she bought in Japan while filming The Grudge. Prinze, Jr. is also a fan of WWE wrestling and was shown on television in attendance for Wrestlemania 24 and a ceremony for the WWE Hall of Fame. In WWE's online wrestling show, the "Dirt Sheet", Prinze made a cameo throwing powder at a wrestler. Freddie has created an official profile on WWE Fan Nation. He regularly blogs on the site with his insight on the current going-ons in the world of the WWE.

[edit] Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1996	To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday	Joey Bost	First Motion Picture
1997	The House of Yes	Anthony Pascal
	I Know What You Did Last Summer	Ray Bronson
1998	I Still Know What You Did Last Summer	Ray Bronson
1999	She's All That	Zach Siler
	Wing Commander	1st Lt. Christopher Blair
2000	Down to You	Alfred 'Al' Connelly
	Boys and Girls	Ryan Walker
2001	Head Over Heels	Jim Winston
	Summer Catch	Ryan Dunne
2002	Friends	Sandy
	Scooby-Doo	Fred Jones
2004	Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed	Fred Jones
2006	Shooting Gallery	Jericho
	Shark Bait	Pi	Voice only
2007	Brooklyn Rules	Michael
	Happily N'Ever After	Rick	voice only
2008	Delgo	Delgo	voice only
	Jack and Jill vs. the World	Jack

[edit] See also

• List of famous Puerto Ricans

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official WWE Fan Nation Profile
• Jam! Movies interview (October 5, 2005)
• Hispanic Magazine interview (September, 2005)
• Freddie Prinze, Jr. at the Internet Movie Database