Erik Von Detten

A tall blond with surfer/boy band good looks, Erik Von Detten has been involved in the entertainment industry since he was a young child. Before he turned 20, he had already developed a huge fan following in teen magazines and on the web, despite never having garnered an enduring lead role, with as much prominent voice-over work to his credit as onscreen.

Erik Thomas Von Detten was born on October 3, 1982, not too far from the lights of Hollywood in San Diego. By age nine, the home-schooled actor had won a bit part in the film All I Want for Christmas and a youth role on Days of Our Lives. In 1995, he put his expressive voice to its first and most memorable use as Sid Phillips, the vicious toy-mangling next-door neighbor in Disney and Pixar's blockbuster hit Toy Story. Von Detten has since developed an ongoing relationship with Disney, providing voices for Hercules (1997), Tarzan (1999), the 2001 TV spin-off The Legend of Tarzan, and both the TV and big-screen incarnations of Disney's Recess franchise.

Von Detten's first notable onscreen film role was as Wally Cleaver in the big-screen adaptation of Leave It to Beaver (1997). This appearance enabled lead roles in the TV movies Brink! and Replacing Dad (both 1998), as well as recurring roles on the series So Weird and ABC's short-lived "TGIF" sitcom Odd Man Out, in which he played the only male in a house full of women (including matriarch Markie Post). Von Detten's most widely seen role came in 2001, when he played the shallow hunk whom Anne Hathaway's character covets in the Disney hit The Princess Diaries. - Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide