Teen keeps level head, eyes ahead
Jonathan Taylor-Thomas is interested more in making a quality movie than making the cover of a teen magazine.
By Michael H. Price
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
They snaked around the block at Planet Hollywood — some 2,000 teenage and pre-teen girls, all intent on receiving an autograph and maybe a smile from Jonathan Taylor Thomas. Some brought cameras, and many dragged their parents along. Thomas, schoolboy star of “Home Improvement” and the movie “Wild America,” showed up right on time, but the crowd assured that he wouldn’t finish on time.
Not that things got unruly, however giggly. As if emulating the intelligent and restrained characters Thomas plays in the movies, his admirers kept calm and orderly. When he finally retreated to a conference room upstairs at the show-biz restaurant, Thomas was still receiving requests from outside for just one last autograph. Not even Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger has drawn more enthusiastic crowds at Dallas’ Planet Hollywood. “I can’t figure it, myself,” Thomas said after his appearance. “I never set out to get this kind of attention, but if it makes people happy — well.”
Thomas said he was grateful that the Planet Hollywood crowd remained sedate. “Kind of intimidating, y’know, to see ‘em all lined up around the block like,” Thomas said. “But at least they’ve been calm about it here. I’ve had ‘em gather around where were trying to shoot a scene, and it’s kind of distracting. “And I’m grateful for their enthusiasm, too, but I’m in this business to act — not to be famous.”
That’s why Thomas chose not to do another movie right after “Wild America.”
“When you don’t have a movie to promote, you don’t have to be on these P.A. (personal appearance) tours, and you don’t have to have your picture plastered over the fan magazines as often,” he said. ‘I need time to myself, too.”
Beating the odds
Thomas possesses that rare and classic kid-star combination of wise-beyond-the-years eyes; a nuanced, mature speaking voice; and the bearing of an adult stranded in a child’s body.
Macaulay Culkin had it, and Robert Blake in his early days, and Shirley Temple. But they outgrew the quality rapidly and had to struggle to keep acting once that precious air was gone. Thomas, at 15, still has it; he said he intends to beat the odds and keep working in film for the long term. “I understand that the system has to address the fans, and at my age, my pictures’ publicists are going to concentrate on getting me written up in the teen-age-girl magazines. I’m more interested in film magazines than fan magazines,” he said. “But you’ve got to put up a front for the fans, I guess — just don’t try to make everybody happy, like trying to answer every fan letter personally. That’s a sure formula for failure.”
“Wild America” is Thomas’ fifth big-screen picture in only three years, and his first star vehicle. In “Wild America,” the 5-foot-3 actor plays 12-year-old Marshall Stouffer, youngest member of a team of brothers who (in real life) became prominent wildlife photographers. The movie tells of the summer of 1967, when Marshall stowed away on his big brothers’ moviemaking expedition and proved himself the most resourceful member of the team. “It’s a story that I could believe in, right from the start, because I believe in the whole animal-rights thing, anyway,” said Thomas, a vegetarian. “The story is not some simple coming-of-age thing, but it’s about how these brothers learned first-hand how you’ve got to respect nature and do all you can to help preserve it.”
The movie is an ensemble piece, with Scott Bairstow and Devon Sawa as the big brothers, but the action unfolds through Thomas’ eyes. “It required the kind of stretch I’ve been looking for, the opportunity to carry a picture,” he said.
Skills of an adult
His “Wild America” character builds upon the “Home Improvement” sitcom role that Thomas has played on television for six years: He’s the level-headed kid in comedian Tim Allen’s hectic household.
His big-screen roles, gained first through his mother’s savvy management and ultimately through popular demand, have been similarly adult like:
- In Disney’s “The Lion King,” Thomas supplied the speaking voice of the cub Simba, who can hardly wait to grow up and be the king of the jungle.
- In “Man of the House,” Thomas plays the precious youngster who resents his mother’s romance with comedian Chevy Chase.
- In “Tom and Huck,” Thomas and Brad Renfro mug the camera mercilessly as Mark Twain’s trouble-prone Southern lads, Tom Sawyer as the brains of the team. “Jonathan has a maturity that many a full-grown actor might be envious of,” Tim Allen says. “And he has a determination to grow within the business, to be a fully rounded human being before he is any kind of movie star. He doesn’t seem to be interested in stardom as an end in itself.”
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