Freddie James Prinze Jr. (born March 8, 1976 in Los Angeles, California) is an American actor, writer, and producer.
Prinze is perhaps best known for starring in a string of youth-oriented films throughout the mid-late '90s, such as I Know What You Did Last Summer, Summer Catch, and She's All That. He also starred in both live-action Scooby-Doo movies as Fred Jones, and Freddie, a sitcom he co-created.
Outside of live-action film and television, Prinze has also done some voiceover work in animated works and video games. Most notably, he portrays James Vega in the Mass Effect universe, Iron Bull in Dragon Age: Inquisition, and Kanan Jarrus in Star Wars Rebels.
Prinze is married to actress Sarah Michelle Gellar, with whom he has two children. They met while filming I Know What You Did Last Summer, and also appeared together in the Scooby Doo films (as love interests) and Rebels (as enemies).
His father, the late Freddie Prinze, was also an actor, best known for his starring role on the '70s sitcom Chico and the Man.
Selected filmography:
- I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) as Ray Bronson
- Wing Commander (1998) as Christopher Blair
- She's All That (1999) as Zack Siler
- Head Over Heels (2001) as Jim Winston/FBI Special Agent Bob Smoot
- Scooby-Doo as Fred Jones
- Scooby-Doo (2002) (2002)
- Scooby-Doo: Monsters Unleashed (2004)
- Boston Legal (2003 — 2004) as Donny Crane
- Robot Chicken (2005 — present) as Fred Jones (voice)
- Freddie (2005 — 2006)
- Happily N'Ever After (2006) as Rick (voice)
- Brooklyn Rules (2007) as Michael
- WWE Raw (2008 — 2009) as himself (also writer)
- 24 (2010) as Cole Ortiz
- Mass Effect as James Vega
- Mass Effect: Paragon Lost (2012)
- Mass Effect 3 (2012)
- Witches of East End (2013) as Leo Wingate
- Bones (2013) as Danny Beck
- Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014) as Iron Bull (voice)
- Star Wars as Kanan Jarrus
- Star Wars Rebels (2014 — 2018)
- The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
- Star Wars: The Bad Batch (2021) as Caleb Dume note (voice)
- Ahsoka (2023) note
- Punky Brewster (2021) (2021 - ) as Travis Luna
Freddie Prinze Jr. provides examples of the following tropes:
- Creator Backlash: Prinze wasn't happy about reprising his role as Kanan in The Rise of Skywalker and The Bad Batch, feeling that doing so diminished the character's conclusion in Rebels.
- Promoted Fanboy: Prinze is an avid gamer, and (to date) has voiced major roles in two video game franchises. He's also a fan of anime, which is kind of realized in Mass Effect: Paragon Lost and Star Wars Rebels.
- Romance on the Set: He met wife Sarah Michelle Gellar while filming I Know What You Did Last Summer, and they played one another's love interest in the Scooby Doo films.
- What Could Have Been:
- He was considered for the role of Peter Parker in the Spider-Man Trilogy before the casting of Tobey Maguire.
- He was Warner Brothers' first choice for the part of Bruce Wayne in Darren Aronofsky's adaptation of Batman: Year One. However, Aronofsky preferred casting Joaquin Phoenix as the titular role before the project was scrapped.
- He was almost TOM for Toonami, though it hasn't been specified if this was for the first TOM, who ended up being played by Sonny Strait or the subsequent TOM incarnations, which Steve Blum ended up playing.
- For Punisher: War Zone, according to the director, he auditioned for the part of Jigsaw and was apparently quite good but the executives told her not to cast him when they had to MAKE the director see him for an audition.
- He initially signed on for Nancy Drew as Nancy's father, Carson Drew, but dropped out shortly before the first trailer was released and was replaced by Scott Wolf.
- He was going to be head writer for WWE Smackdown but quit the company after listening to "Stone Cold" Steve Austin talk about how being a wrestler cost him a chance to be a good father. Prinze chose to focus on being a father first and saw he couldn't do that work the WWE schedule.
