Thomas not your average teen idol
By Barry Koltnow
Orange County Register
Tom Sawyer envied Huck Finn’s independence. Huck Finn envied Tom Sawyer’s sense of security. Jonathan Taylor Thomas doesn’t envy either one of them. “Tom and Huck were all about the grass looking greener on the other side of the fence,” the young actor said. “But I’ve never envied anybody else’s grass. My grass is green enough for me.”
His grass would be green enough for just about any actor. For the last five years, he has played the middle child on the hit television show “Home Improvement,” starred with Chevy Chase in the box-office smash “Man of the House,” was the voice of young Simba in Disney’s “The Lion King” and now is the name above the title in the new film “Tom and Huck.”
Maybe that’s not quite at the level of, say Jim Carey, Tom Hanks or even Tim Allen. Then again, they aren’t 14. Thomas, who plays Tom Sawyer opposite Brad Renfro’s Huck in the latest retelling of the Mark Twain classic about two boys growing up along the Mississippi River, comes across in person like a manchild without the usual accompanying precociousness. He speaks like an adult, acts like an adult even eats like an adult. Munching on a salad of mixed greens — including, yuck, radicchio — Thomas hits on a wide range of topics, from how he got into the business (modeling) to what he plans to do when he gets tired of acting (Writing, directing and producing, of course).
One gets the distinct feeling that this is not another child actor who will suffer an unwanted career burnout. “I don’t want to escalate too fast in my career because you can get really lost,” he said. “I like the pace it’s been going at: no big explosions and no disappearing acts. “My career could end suddenly, that can happen to any actor. But I think I’m better prepared than most child actors. I have been concentrating on my education so I have something to fall back on. You can’t put all your eggs into one basket flips over, you’ve got nothing. If my career goes kerplunk, I’ll be ready to do something else.”
You said things like that when you were 14, didn’t you?
Thomas, a native of Bethlehem, Pa., moved with his family to Sacramento when he was 5. He says he was intrigued by a young model in a TV commercial and asked his mother if he could give it a try. He was soon modeling for local clothing stores.
His agent sent him to Los Angeles when he was 8 to audition for television shows. Within three weeks he won a spot on the short-lived series, “The Bradys.” The following year, he returned to L.A. for more auditions and got the role of Randy on “Home Improvement.” “I really have grown up on that show, and I mean that literally,” he said. “The reruns are like watching really well-done home videos. We really were little guys when that show started, weren’t we?”
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