Mar 8, 1976

Los Angeles, California, USA

Freddie James Prinze, Jr. is an American actor, perhaps best known for his leading roles in teen-oriented films. Prinze was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Katherine Elaine Cochran (a real-estate agent) and Freddie Prinze, an American actor and comedian who died in 1977, after Elaine left him and filed a restraining order against him. Prinze was just 10 months old at the time. His father's death was originally termed a suicide but later ruled an accident, as he was under the influenc... ... (read more...) e of Quaaludes. Prinze's paternal grandfather was German [1] with Jewish heritage and his paternal grandmother was Puerto Rican; he was raised a Roman Catholic [2] and embraces his Puerto Rican heritage [3].

Prinze grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Puerto Rico. He learned about Spanish and Puerto Rican culture from his paternal grandmother's Puerto Rican family. He showed an interest in acting from an early age and attended La Cueva High School in Albuquerque, which he's described in interviews as a painful experience. Having an interest in drama, he became a member of the Albuquerque Children's Theatre and the Duo Drama Company. After graduating high school in 1994, he moved to Los Angeles and began auditioning for television roles.
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Prinze was cast in a guest role on the ABC TV series Family Matters in 1995. He then appeared on a few special programmes and made-for-TV movies, before making his motion picture debut in To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday in 1996.

In the following years, Prinze had a great deal of 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, Prinze 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 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 Boston Legal.

Prinze starred in his own television sitcom, titled Freddie. The sitcom is said to represent some actual events from his life. The show lasted one season (fall 2005 - spring 2006) before being canceled in May 2006.
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Prinze married actress Sarah Michelle Gellar on September 1, 2002 in Jalisco, Mexico, south of Puerto Vallarta. 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.

Prinze is trained in several forms of martial arts and considers tap dancing and collecting comic books his hobbies. He is also an avid soccer fan and supports the team Arsenal F.C..