Jonathan Taylor Thomas photographed with young fans @/thetionahobson & @/roquitheus at the Alamodome stadium in San Antonio, Texas, for the 1996 NBA All-Star Game on February 11, 1996 in which Jonathan attended.
Photo credit: @/thehop22 / @/thetionahobson via Instagram
Jonathan Taylor Thomas photographed with founder & president of the American Eagle Foundation Al Cecere and an owl named “Owl-X” on June 14, 1997 at Reel Theatres in Sevierville, Tennessee, for a benefit screening premiere of “Wild America” for the National Foundation to Protect America’s Eagles.
Photography sourced from the ‘Reely Critical’ blog
Jonathan Taylor Thomas photographed with @/jamminjoel in the early 1990s at Dalt’s bar & grill restaurant (closed 2005) located in Burbank, California, after a taping of Home Improvement.
Photography via Facebook @/jamminjoel
Jonathan Taylor Thomas & Larisa Oleynik appear in an advert for Nickelodeon’s The Big Help in late 1997.
Video sourced from Internet Archive
Speedway Junky
Release: June 22, 1999 (United States)
Theatrical Release: August 31, 2001
Director & Writer: Nickolas Perry
Genre: Drama/Crime/LGBTQI+
Runtime: 1 hour 45 minutes
Starring:
Jesse Bradford as Johnny
Jordan Brower as Eric
Jonathan Taylor Thomas as Steve
Daryl Hannah as Veronica
Tiffani Theissen as Wilma Price
Synopsis:
Johnny (Jesse Bradford) runs away from home to pursue his dream of becoming a professional racecar driver. He winds up in Las Vegas, where, after losing all of his money, meets and befriends Eric (Jordan Brower) a young, gay hustler, who introduces Johnny to his hustler friends, including Steve (Jonathan Taylor Thomas) and ex-hooker mom (Daryl Hannah); thus introducing him to the world of hustling.
Production Companies:
Magic Entertainment Inc. (presents)
Golan-Globus Productions (production)
Miracle Entertainment
Powers That Be Pictures
Distributors:
Regent Releasing (United States, 2001) (theatrical)
Pioneer Entertainment (United States, 2000)
Xscapade Pictures Ltd. (United Kingdom)
Jonathan Taylor Thomas interviewed by Bobbie Wygant on June 29, 1996 for 1996’s “Pinocchio.”
Video sourced from “The Bobbie Wygant Archive” (July 16, 2021) via YouTube. For archival purposes.
Jonathan Taylor Thomas interviewed by Bobbie Wygant in February of 1995 for 1995’s “Man of The House.”
Video sourced from “The Bobbie Wygant Archive” (July 16, 2021) via YouTube. For archival purposes.
Jonathan Taylor Thomas photographed in Culver City, California, on April 18, 1997 for his advertisement for ‘Got Milk?’
April 18, 1997
Culver City, California.
The original idea for the Jonathan Taylor Thomas photo was to have him sitting in front of a makeup mirror.
After kicking the idea around a bit, we decided that what we really wanted was to downplay Jonathan’s role on television’s Home Improvement and promote J.T.T. as a teenage heartthrob.
We came up with the garage concept. There wasn’t one woman on the set that day that didn’t think he looked cute.
Guess it worked.
Text sourced from “The Milk Mustache Book: A Behind-The-Scenes Look At America’s Favorite Advertising Campaign” By Jay Schulberg. 1999 Ballantine Books.
Advertisement transcript: “Sure I’m young. But I know a lot about girls. Stuff they don’t even know. Like, 8 out of 10 don’t get enough calcium. Big mistake, but easy to fix. Just get at least 3 glasses of milk a day. It has lots of calcium to help bones grow strong. Of course, milk helps me too. I look older with a mustache.”
During his appearance on The Rosie O’Donnell Show’s Season 2, Episode 26, in 1997, Jonathan explains what that infamous milk mustache is made of:
“It’s a bunch of different things. Its got yogurt, ice cream, milk, glue. Its got everything in there so it stays on your lips during the shoot.”
Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Devon Sawa, & Scott Bairstow interviewed by Bobbie Wygant for 1997’s ‘Wild America’ in 1997.
Video sourced from “The Bobbie Wygant Archive” (September 2, 2022) via YouTube. No copyright intended. For archival purposes.
In 1997, The Make a Wish Foundation granted (@/the_current_lifestyle)’s wish to meet Jonathan Taylor Thomas. With her family, she spent some time with the young actor, where he gave her a tour of the Home Improvement set in California, signed autographs, took photographs & more!
“It was such an amazing experience. He spent a lot of time with my family and me on the set of Home Improvement. He gave us a tour, answered questions, signed autographs and took photos. He was so incredibly nice.” — (@/the_current_lifestyle) via Instagram.
Jonathan Taylor Thomas photographed with Alan Locher (@/alanglenn) on set of the January 1996 photoshoot for Premiere Magazine.
Photography from (@/alanglenn) via Instagram
Exclusively via US Weekly, Actor Devon Sawa recalls the last time he spoke to his Wild America co-star Jonathan Taylor Thomas. August 31, 2021.
“I had a great time on that [1997’s Wild America]. Jonathan was amazing to work with. I remember we did school together and we had tons of great times,” Sawa, 42, told Us Weekly exclusively while promoting his new USA series, Chucky. “I spoke to [Jonathan] recently, within the last year or so. I don’t keep in touch with him as much as I should, I think. He’s a great dude.”
“We should totally do a TV show or something. I don’t know if he wants to act anymore, I don’t know what he’s doing,” Sawa added. “I need to have a serious one-hour lunch sit-down, figure out what that guy wants to do! ‘You should be acting! Forget this Harvard nonsense, you should be acting!'”
Devon Sawa recalls the mania surrounding 1997's Wild America featuring Jonathan Taylor Thomas & Scott Bairstow. August 28, 2019.
“There was a point where Jonathan [Taylor Thomas] and I were in London, and we shared a limo,” Sawa remembered of the press tour in 1997. “It was, like, [we were] The Beatles! They were chasing our car and smacking the windows, and that’s when I finally realized that, ‘Holy shit, this is getting crazy.’”
HEAD DOWN, FINGERS INTERLACED as if in prayer, thirteen‑year‑old Jonathan Taylor Thomas is sitting in the rough‑hewn witness dock of Tom & Huck's faux 19th‑century courtroom, silent and still for what seems like the first time in days. Just moments before, he was joking and backslapping as he entered the Mooresville brick church, fresh from watching the NBA playoffs near the soundman's setup. But if there is a key dramatic scene in the Walt Disney Company's latest cinematic retelling of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, then this is it: the moment when Tom breaks his vow to Huckleberry Finn and declares that the man accused of Doc Robinson's murder—amiable widebody Muff Potter—is, in fact, innocent. "Give the actor some help," yells first AD Howard Ellis, the set's alpha male, and, as if on cue, Tom Huck's unprepossessing British director, Peter Hewitt, ambles over to Thomas, leans into him with an almost paternal mien, and calmly starts discussing the scene.
Hewitt's initial reaction to the casting of Thomas was less than enthusiastic. Though he'd never sat down to watch an episode of Home Improvement, Hewitt feared that a veteran sitcom child would be too cool, too laid‑back, too hipper‑than‑thou for the grittiness he wanted to bring to the Tom Sawyer saga. Thomas's initial readings allayed his concerns, and, after a week or so of dailies, Hewitt sussed out that Thomas's pretake joshing was actually a part of his technique.
Now, however, a subdued Thomas needs a little guidance from his director. And so Hewitt instructs his star to keep one emotion uppermost in his mind: "This is your time to stand up and say, 'Fuck off—I was there, I saw it, all of you just fuck off.'"
Well, whatever. Hewitt's counsel works: On "Action," Thomas leaps out of his chair, slams the side of his hand onto the courthouse Bible, and delivers a well‑modulated, full-intensity blurt that will set the stage for the rest of the film's derring‑do. It's a performance forceful enough to warrant the considerable coverage Hewitt wants to give it… but as the late‑May swelter of this Saturday in Alabama finally begins to abate, there are indications near the back of the courtroom of what some shows like to call kinderpanic.
By law, underage actors are only allowed to work a given number of hours a day; throughout the shoot, scenes have been rewritten and shot selection recrafted to maximize Thomas's on‑set time within Tom & Huck's $10 million budget. There are less than fifteen minutes left on Thomas's clock today, and so while lighting setups are being frantically changed, a spirited discussion takes place among Ellis, Hewitt, and executive producer Barry Bernardi. "You see no panic," Bernardi tells a visitor, "but my sphincter is going…”
The only member of the production team who seems wholly unpuckered is Thomas. Earlier that day, he needed an ice bag, some balm, and an Advil after a window slammed down on his elbow during second‑unit shooting, but now he's alert and raring to go. Knocking out lines and quick reaction shots with professional aplomb, Thomas does his part to keep things on schedule. Before being sent off the set at his witching hour, Thomas finally flubs a take: "Are you hot?" he quips to no one in particular. "I'm very hot."
IF YOU DON'T know how right he is, you haven't been paying attention. For the past five years, Thomas has starred in the top‑ranked ABC sitcom Home Improvement. That gig, combined with his performance as the (nonsinging) voice of Young Simba in The Lion King, made Thomas a teen idol who now receives an estimated 50,000 pieces of mail per month. In the process he has joined such esteemed 'throbs of the past as the Monkees, Rick Springfield, and New Kids on the Block as a cover boy for a raft of preadolescent magazines like Bop and 16, which each month chronicle the likes, dislikes, semi-romantic reveries, and celebutante appearances of the boy they call JTT.
Hollywood's wake‑up call came early last year, with the astonishing $9.5 million opening weekend of Thomas's first live‑action feature, Man of the House. (Since costar Chevy Chase's previous movie had opened at $3.7 million, the industry had a pretty good idea of who the public was paying to see.) Now, with Tom & Huck trailers set to be stuck onto Toy Story and an overall commercial buy estimated at more than twice the film's budget, Disney is giving Tom & Huck the kind of full‑on star sell usually reserved for Tom Cruise vehicles. If Tom & Huck performs up to par, Thomas, who turned fourteen last September, will become the first bankable young actor since Macaulay Culkin.
For a child‑star industry that grew fat on family TV shows, only to witness the rise of the hour‑long adult drama—and that has seen its big‑screen mainstays wind up in the tabloids, in rehab, or in retirement—Thomas's ascent can't come soon enough. Michael Kinsley once described Albert Gore as "an old person's idea of what a young person should be," so figure Jonathan Taylor Thomas for the Al Gore of teen idoldom: intelligent, funny, mature, loaded with craft, and watched over by a mother seemingly more intent on the development of his brain and heart than his bank account.
Rick Rodgers, Bop's elfin editor, wonders whether there's a 40‑year‑old man hiding somewhere beneath Thomas's tawny skin. 'It's an observation that is made a lot, and not just because Thomas is worldly beyond his years. You can hear it in his voice: It's slower, almost a drawl, and less eager to impress than that of other bright kids. He plays street hockey, but his love is fly‑fishing, and he has the wistful detachment anglers often have.
"It's odd that as soon as a film opens, people become interested in you," he says one day in his trailer, between scene changes and his on‑the‑set schooling. "It's great that we're getting scripts, but why? Is it because you can act, or because your film opened well? It's confusing, especially for a kid."
All too true: Consider the case of the Walt Disney gift. In the wake of Man of the House's phenomenal opening, a token of congratulation was clearly in order. So the Disney bigwigs asked, What does Jonathan like? The answer was, of course, fishing—so the Disney people procured a top‑of‑the‑line fly rod, and dispatched it to Thomas that Monday with the studio's heartiest thanks for a job well done.
But that Monday, like most Mondays, brought Thomas to Home Improvement alongside Tim Allen, who just a few months earlier had made his motion picture debut for Disney. Allen's The Santa Clause had enjoyed an equally impressive opening, and the Disney people had sought to reward him as well. They'd gotten Allen a Porsche.
Thomas's agent, Tracy Brennan of ICM, promptly brought to Disney's attention the disparity in the stars' swag. Later that day, a large package was delivered to Thomas. Inside was a full‑throttle home‑entertainment center that apparently looked like something out of a Matt Helm movie.
So which is the lesser evil: the inability of studios to recognize that their minors are every bit as hardworking and worthy of their largesse… or that the very greed and ingratitude for which we would scold a child we encourage in a talent agency acting on that child's behalf? Yes, it does get confusing, especially for a kid like Thomas. No wonder he seeks civilians for his private‑time companions.
"You can't be trapped in this bubble called the acting industry," he says. "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." Too sane to be a poet, too levelheaded for glamorous rebellion, Thomas is building a career that provides a promontory from which to observe the death valley that young stardom has lately tended to become—a prime example of which lies no farther away than the neighboring Tom & Huck trailer.
During his audition for the role of Huck Finn, twelve‑year‑old Brad Renfro grabbed an ax and chased a casting assistant around the office—because, he said, "if I couldn't have her, then nobody could." He and his electric guitar stay out well into the wee, wee hours playing "Anarchy in the U.K." at a club in Huntsville. The Tom & Huck producers are paying an "acting coach" $10,000 a month to keep him in line, but neither she nor anyone else can stop the packs of cigarettes, or the girls in his trailer.
Of course, even he knows just how big Jonathan Taylor Thomas is: At Hooters, Renfro told the bouncers, "I'm the kid with the kid from Home Improvement."
THE KID FROM Home Improvement was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, second son to Stephen and Claudine Weiss. In 1986 the family moved to Sacramento, where Jonathan did some print modeling and the occasional stage show. He was still calling himself Jonathan Weiss the first time he met casting director Deborah Barylski, who was auditioning youngsters for a made‑for‑TV movie called Guess Who's Coming for Christmas. He didn't get the role, but she liked what she'd seen—so in 1991, when it came time to audition boys for a highly touted sitcom pilot entitled Home Improvement, Barylski thought of Weiss, who was by now calling himself Jonathan Taylor Thomas, perhaps because his parents had split up. Barylski's March 20, 1991, notation next to Thomas's name reads: T.O.D—in other words, Test Option Deal right away.
Some seventeen executives crowded the room for Thomas's audition. After it was done, Richard Frank, then head of Disney television, made the kind of remark that's only recalled when it's so prescient: "That kid's gonna be a star."
But it didn't really happen—at least, not right away. When the show hit number one, it did so, in the eyes of the industry, on the strength of Allen and his stand‑up skills. Thomas, along with colleagues Zachery Ty Bryan and Taran Smith, were "the boys." By the beginning of the third season, in 1993, that had begun to grate a bit.
So on the third season's first day of shooting, the boys called in sick. Press reports said they were asking for a salary increase from $8,000 to $25,000 per show. Bonnie Ventis, Thomas's original agent, asserts that "creature comforts" were a greater issue: The boys' onset chairs were chained together, she says, and they could only play basketball in a truck lane.
Perhaps. Disney wasted no time in responding to the sick out: It reopened auditions for the roles. "Disney's feeling was, no one's going to hold up the show," says executive producer Carmen Finestra. The boys returned the next day. It may have been a PR debacle for the young actors, but that season saw Thomas's star begin to rise; says Finestra, "That's when I started to hear, 'Boy, that middle kid, I like him.'"
But even while Disney's TV side was playing hardball, the feature‑animation folks had chosen him over dozens of boys to play The Lion King's Young Simba. Codirector Roger Allers recalls holding the now four‑foot‑eleven Thomas upside down and shaking him for audio verité during the wildebeest stampede. More poignantly, Allers also recalls the psych job he did on Thomas to gear him up for Simba's discovery of his dead father. "We were talking about how it would feel if he had lost his parent," recalls Allers. "Since his mother was always there, and I knew they must be close, I used her as an example: 'Think of how this would feel: You've just seen your mother fall into a river and now you've found her washed up.' " Simba's first line in the scene is an anguished cry of "Dad!" "But after I coached him into thinking through it that way," says Allers, "we said, 'Let's go,' dimmed the lights ... and Jonathan said, 'Mom!"
In the fall of 1994, on the heels of The Lion King's success, Claudine left Ventis for ICM's Brennan, who got Disney to pony up an additional $350,000 on top of the $250,000 option it held on Thomas's next movie, Tom & Huck. With Pinocchio to follow for the ill‑fated Savoy Pictures, Thomas is unavailable for film work now until summertime 1996, but that hasn't stopped the cascade of requests for personal appearances and endorsements. "Jonathan," says Brennan, "could be his own business."
BACK IN HIS Mooresville trailer, it's as if Thomas can see the show business landscape littered with the young actors who couldn't adjust to the distinctly uncute real world. "You know, how serious do you take this stuff? I mean, you should be focused on doing a good job, but—it's a job. And every job has an end. I think most of those children weren't prepared for me end. I mean, it’s not the end or your life! You can't base your life around one thing. So that's why I focus on school, I play sports, I learn the technical side of [filmmaking]. Because sometime it'll change, and I'll have my education to fall back on."
Indeed, Thomas seems eager for that day to come. As he envisions his future, it looks a lot less like Mac Culkin's and a lot more like Jodie Foster's or Ron Howard's. Thomas wants to go to college—he's already visited Yale, Harvard, and NYU—and then "I'd like to direct, I really would. And I think I'll have the chance, you know? Being able to see this firsthand is the best experience you can have, unless you're the son of Steven Spielberg. I'm only thirteen: I can learn a lot between now and"—he laughs—"when I'm actually old enough to be in the DGA."
Until then, though, Jonathan Taylor Thomas is still a boy, and it might have been a reflection of the crew's respect for him, their acknowledgement of his incipient manhood, that they fondly recalled those moments when he acted very much his age. Like the day they shot Tom and Becky Thatcher's kiss. "Oh man, he really didn't want to do it," recalls Peter Hewitt. "He wanted to know how many times, and from how many angles. It was quite cute. I think it was his first screen kiss."
He should be so lucky, right? "That's what I was saying to him: 'Look—she's gorgeous."
"The crew members were reliving their first kiss," says a laughing Rachael Leigh Cook, who, at fifteen, is a slightly more worldly Becky. "Jonathan was a little nervous." During one close‑up, she says, "we were, like, 'Nice, Peter—what do you call this, the nosecam?'"
Et tu, Jonathan? "I could not believe how many angles Peter wanted," says Thomas. "When it was getting up into the thirties in takes, I was, 'You know, my lips are going to fall off pretty soon.'
"But if I wasn't having a good time doing this, I would not do it. Why would I fall off bridges, and, you know, have to kiss girls if I wasn't having a blast?" For now at least, the DGA can wait.
Christopher Connelly is an executive editor of PREMIERE. January 1996 / Volume 9. Number 5.
1992 People’s Choice Awards BACKSTAGE PRESS ROOM: Tim Allen, Patricia Richardson, Pamela Anderson, Richard Kind, Earl Hindman, Zachery Ty Bryan, Taran Noah Smith, and Jonathan Taylor Thomas talk about their award for Home Improvement at the 18th Annual People's Choice Awards, held at Universal Studios Hollywood in Universal City, California 17th March 1992.
(Footage by WireImage Video/Photography by Getty Images)
Jonathan Taylor Thomas attends the 11th Annual Nickelodeon's Kids' Choice Awards on April 4, 1998 at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion in Westwood, California.
(Footage by WireImage Video/Getty Images / Images via Getty Images / Alamy Stock Photo)
New York (AP) — Jonathan Taylor Thomas says he’s not concerned about whether rumors will surface about his sexuality because he plays a gay character in an upcoming cable TV movie.
“I’m playing a role. I’m not gay,” the 18-year-old said in the Jan. 29 issue of TV Guide. “I’m not going to sacrifice the opportunity to play a great part just because the character is gay.”
Thomas, who gained fame on the sitcom “Home Improvement,” said he is not worried at all about what people might think of his character in the Showtime movie “Common Ground.”
“At some point, every male actor in Hollywood has been (rumored to be) gay,” he says. “I just (got) it when I was 16, but hopefully it’s done with now.”
Jonathan Taylor Thomas attends the premiere for "Speedway Junky" at the Regent Showcase Theatre in Los Angeles, California, on August 27, 2001.
(Getty Images / Milan Ryba/Globe Photos/Alamy Stock Photo/Photoshelter-Hutchins)
Former-waitress Kalika Moquin met Jonathan Taylor Thomas & Zachery Ty Bryan at the karaoke bar Dimples in Burbank, California, in November of 2001 while waitressing.
Via Facebook, she shares her exclusive story on that exact night when she met the Home Improvement stars.
“I moved to LA at age 19, and got a job waitressing at a [Karaoke] bar in Burbank called Dimples. […] It was around 8pm, my 2nd night on the job. The bartender flags me over and says ‘hey, the kids from Home Improvement just sat in your section’ - my heart stopped. There was NO WAY it could be JTT. I looked up and over at the table towards the back, and there he was. […]
Before I could go over to the table, they got up, and began walking to the bar. I all but raced over to meet them half way, and as cool and calmly as I could, welcomed them to Dimples, said I would be their waitress, and asked if I could take their drink order. They were both so nice and polite, and had one other friend in [town.] Right after I took their order, the owner came up to us as asked to snap a photo with his Polaroid camera, so he could hang it on the “Wall of Fame”, which was covered with celebrities who had visited the bar. This is that photo, which he printed a copy of for me. And though I have long lost the original, I’m very happy at one point in time I took a pic of it.
They stayed until around 10pm. I checked in with them a couple of times, let them know I had just moved from Montana, and was a big fan of course. As they were leaving, Zach turned me to and asked ‘What time do you get off? We’re all going up to my place in Glendale if you want to come […] I responded ‘I would love to, but just started this job and don’t get off until 1am.’ ‘That’s ok’ he said. ‘If we’re still hanging we’ll come back and get you.’
[…] To my shock, they did. Waiting in a truck in the parking lot for me right at 1 when I walked out the doors. It was only Zach and his friend in the truck, but they said Jonathan was at the house waiting for us to get back. And he was.
The four of us went hot tubbing, made apple martinis, stayed up talking, and had a blast until around 5am, when I eventually crashed on the couch. The next morning they drove me back to my car. And I spent all day calling every single person I knew back home (from a landline) to tell them the story. It’s like it wasn’t real, it was a high that lasted a long time after, and something I’ll never forget.
I never saw them after that night, and moved back to Montana a couple of months after. My time in LA was a short but impactful one in life. That taught me some hard lessons, while setting a trajectory for many years to come.”
Jonathan Taylor Thomas at the Nickelodeon 12th Annual Kids' Choice Awards at UCLA in Westwood, California on May 1, 1999. (Footage by WireImage Video/Getty Images)
Jonathan was voted and made it into the Kids’ Choice Awards Hall of Fame of 1999.
(Photography by Jeff Kravitz/Getty Images /Photoshelter-Hutchins)
‘The Adventures of Pinocchio’ featuring Jonathan Taylor Thomas (Pinocchio), Martin Landau (Geppetto), and others… released July 26, 1996 by ...
