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Erik Thomas Von Detten was born on October 3, 1982, not too far from the lights of Hollywood in San Diego. A tall blond with surfer boy with his sun-bleached hair and
California boy good looks, Erik Von Detten has been involved in the entertainment industry since he was a young child. While still in his teens, he had already developed a huge fan following in teen
magazines and websites such as this one. This despite never having won a leading role in a film. In fact he has as much prominent voice-over work to his credit as on-screen work. By age nine, the
home-schooled actor had won a bit part in the film All I Want for Christmas (1999) and a youth role on Days of Our Lives when only eight.
Detten went on to appear in several TV-movies, where he
excelled at playing the sensitive son of the troubled main characters when not taking the lead role in videos aimed at children. In 1994 he played a troubled boy in the fact-based drama "In
The Best of Families: Marriage, Pride and Murder" (CBS). Then the following year, he was featured as the troubled child of JoBeth Williams and Stephen Lang in "A Season of Hope". In a
starring roles he played half of a pair of children with mysterious powers in a 1995 remake of "Escape To Witch Mountain" (aired as an ABC Family Movie) and a self-engrossed boy who, along the
lines of "Groundhog Day", must relive Christmas over and over again until he realizes the true meaning of the holiday in The Family Channel's holiday fable "Christmas Every Day"
(1996), He played the champion inline skater in "Brink!" (1998), a Disney Channel modern adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's "Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates". In 1999, the
actor was featured as a teenage boy struggling with his father's extramarital affairs and the break up of his parents' marriage in the CBS TV movie "Replacing Dad".
Von Detten's first
notable on-screen 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). This
regular role afforded von Detten exceptional visibility and undoubtedly added to his legions of young fans.
On the cinema screen, von Detten played the role as the son of a slain police officer in
the Chuck Norris action comedy "Top Dog" (1995). In one of his most memorable roles, he gave an appropriately menacing voice characterization to Sid, the sadistic, toy mangling young neighbor
who nabs cowboy doll Woody and astronaut action figure Buzz Lightyear in the hit computer animated feature "Toy Story" (also 1995) The actor additionally used his expressive voice work in
Disney's 1997 animated entry "Hercules" and Tarzan (1999).
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.
Before his acting career took off he earned cash by mowing lawns and baby sitting. His hobbies are photography and sailing and his musical tastes include reggae,
rap, and classical music.
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