Freddie James Prinze, Jr. (born March 8, 1976) is an American actor and contributing member of World Wrestling Entertainment’s creative team. He became known during the late 1990s and early 2000s, after starring in several Hollywood films aimed at teenage audiences, including Delgo, I Know What You Did Last Summer and its sequel, as well as She’s All That, and Scooby-Doo. Prinze, Jr. has also made appearances in television sitcoms, including Friends.
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 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 and Hungarian Jewish 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”); in a 2007 interview, however, Prinze, Jr. described his mother as coming from an Italian American family. Prinze, Jr. was raised Roman Catholic and embraces his Puerto Rican heritage. He grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico as well as spent summers in Puerto Rico, where he learned about Spanish and Puerto Rican culture from his Puerto Rican paternal grandmother. He speaks fluent Spanish and Italian. 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.
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 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 and had moderate box office performances. 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 drama-comedy 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. In 2004, the actor accepted a special award from TV Land on behalf of his late father. The actor thanked his dad’s former co-star, Della Reese, for her continued advice and support.
World Wrestling Entertainment
Prinze is also a known fan of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and was shown on television in attendance at the March 2008 WrestleMania XXIV pay-per-view and its preceding Hall of Fame ceremony. He also made a cameo on an episode of The Dirt Sheet, an online program hosted by wrestlers John Morrison and The Miz, view and created an official profile on WWE’s “Universe” blog community where he regularly writes his thoughts on the current going-ons in the world of the WWE. His relationship with the company was furthered when he was hired as a member of the creative staff to contributing to weekly television and pay-per-view program for the SmackDown brand.
Personal life
In the mid-1990s, Prinze, Jr. dated actress Kimberly McCullough for more than three years. 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, but started dating in 2000 and were engaged in April 2001. She had a small role in She’s All That, which starred Prinze Jr. Freddie also starred in Scooby Doo and the sequel with Sarah. In 2007, for their fifth year of marriage, Sarah legally changed her name to Sarah Michelle Prinze.
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 Arsenal F.C., and is a fan of East Asian cinema. Prinze received a katana from Gellar in 2004 that Sarah bought in Japan while filming The Grudge.
