Jonathan Taylor Thomas

Jonathan Taylor Thomas was born on September 8, 1981, and cast as Randy Taylor—the scheming, wisecracking middle son—on ABC's Home Improvement when the show premiered in 1991. He remained a lead cast member for 179 episodes across the show's eight-season run, establishing himself as a fixture of family television and the comedic heart of the series.

By the mid-1990s he had become the preeminent teen-magazine heartthrob—the face on the cover racks and a million bedroom walls, known to an entire generation simply as "JTT." He voiced young Simba in Disney's The Lion King (1994), and his film run included Man of the House (1995), Tom and Huck (1995), Wild America (1997), and I'll Be Home for Christmas (1998).

Then, in 1998, at the absolute peak of his fame, he made a choice that almost no child star makes: he left Home Improvement to focus on academics, appearing in only three episodes of the show's final season. He enrolled at Harvard University in 2000, studying philosophy and history, and spent a year at St Andrews University in Scotland before eventually graduating from Columbia University in 2010. It was a vanishing act orchestrated at the exact moment the industry would have kept him forever.

He returned to the spotlight only occasionally, guest-starring on and directing episodes of Tim Allen's Last Man Standing (2013–2016). The exit—at peak fame, for education, for a life outside the machinery—became as much a part of his legend as the fame itself.