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In the early to mid ’90s, you’d be hard pressed to find a teenage girl’s bedroom without a picture of Jonathan Taylor Thomas. He was the decade’s ultimate teen heartthrob – non-threatening, annoyingly good hair and looks that made girls pledge fealty like a cultist to their God.
He was everywhere! He was on talk shows and magazine covers, a huge Disney movie and of course, one of the most popular TV shows of all time in Home Improvement. Thomas started his acting career at the age of 8. He went pretty much nonstop from that age to about 17 when he decided he wanted to focus on his studies.
Lots of child actors burn out and become addicts or worse after their golden years, but JTT always seemed to have a good head on his shoulders. Despite being constantly tailed by teenage girls, he looked at things from a big-picture perspective.
“You can’t be trapped in this bubble called the acting industry,” he said at the height of his fame. “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. I don’t like hanging out with other actors and actresses.”
Even the adoring fans would weight on him.
”It’s sometimes distracting to look over and see a whole group of girls staring and giggling,” he told The New York Times. “You are a part of their life, and there is a lot that is owed them. But it’s difficult because you want to make everyone happy, but if you try to do that, you’re setting yourself up for failure.”
Regardless, he had quite the run through the ’90s. Here’s a list, in no particular order, of Thomas’ best performances.
Wild America — 1997
Let’s start with Wild America. This movie was literally a teenage dream. It featured three of the most popular teen idols of the time: Thomas (Marshall), Scott Bairstow (Marty) and Devon Sawa (Mark). The movie is about three brothers who travel the country and catalogue their adventures with wild animals and the natural world.
Thomas is the youngest of the three, and looks up to his brothers and wants to go with them on the trip. In the movie, he’s the one who gets put in dangerous situations, but he’s also quick to prank his brothers for revenge.
For example, he dips his brothers’ toothbrushes in a commode and fills up their canteens downstream from where they used the facilities. He’s fun and he embraces his more comedic side in a way that makes for a breezy adventure film, one that’s short on story but heavy on everything else.
The Lion King — 1994
Hard to beat this one for pure entertainment value. One of the biggest films of the ’90s, The Lion King went on to gross $968.4 million on a paltry budget of $45 million. The movie’s songs, characters and story are engraved into the public psyche like Pepsi and Taco Bell.
Thomas played young Simba, and he did a great job with a great script. He had to deal with his father’s death, which was no picnic in and of itself. While he provided the voice acting, a singer named Jason Weaver handled the songs. Which is probably for the best.
The Extra — 2006
Safe to say this isn’t one of Thomas’ most famous roles, but it’s worth it for all you JTT completionists out there. In a bit of meta commentary, Thomas plays a director tasked with sculpting actor Clyde Baker (Ryan Styles) into a respectable background performer.
It’s a short film (12 minutes to be exact) but it’s good to know that even in his so-called later years, Thomas still has that immaculate hair. Was this a hit? Certainly not. Was it meant to be? Who knows anything anymore. Here’s the trailer.
Tom and Huck — 1995
While modern sensibilities have changed a lot over the years, and it doesn’t have the same literary weight it used to, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remains one of the most popular children’s books of all time.
This adaptation obviously takes quite a few liberties with the source material, but on paper this one knocks it out of the park. Two of the most popular teen stars in a quintessential children’s book spells success on paper. How did it fare otherwise? Not great in the critical area but it grossed a respectable $23 million at the box office, which is double that in today’s money.
This is especially remarkable because it was a VHS and LaserDisc only release.
Home Improvement – 1991 through 1998
This is the show that put JTT on the map. It’s hard to grasp just how popular Home Improvement was to America. It was in the Nielsen top 10 every single year it was on the air, peaking at number 2 during its third season.
Thomas played Randy, the middle child in the Taylor family, and one who got a lot of the best lines. Thomas really shines in this role, showing off an easy chemistry and likability that endeared him to the hearts and minds of teens all over.
His last episode aired on December 8, 1998 and he did not return to film the finale. His reason for leaving the show was to further his education but he also did a few movies before moving away from acting all together.
Speedway Junky – 1999
This is more of a curiosity than anything else, but it did showcase JTT in a completely new light. The move was probably intentional, as Thomas probably didn’t want to be typecast for the rest of his career. In Speedway Junky, he plays a bisexual prostitute who is into sleeping with men “because they pay more” and doing drugs.
It’s pretty much the farthest you can get from Home Improvement, but because of its subject matter, it struggled to find a distributor. It got a short theatrical release in 2001 but didn’t quite make a splash.