Vanities

FRESH PRINZE

January 2000 John Gillies
Vanities
FRESH PRINZE
January 2000 John Gillies

Name and occupation: Freddie Prinze Jr., actor. Age: 23. Provenance: Albuquerque, New Mexico. Established his teenheartthrob status with: She's All Then, with Rachael Leigh Cook, and I Know What You Did Last Summer (as well as the sequel, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer), starring Jennifer Love Hewitt. Now taking a mature turn in: Down to You. with Selma Blair and Julia Stiles, and Head over Heels, with Monica Potter. Prinze’s Hollywood roots: He is the son of the late comedian Freddie Prinze (star of Chico and the Man). What that legacy, if Prinze has anything to do with it, won’t earn him: I'm not trying to be my old man. I've gotten sitcom scripts that literally read Chico and the Man: The Sequel, and, like. I'm not that guy.” Your struggling-actor years could be titled “From the Fight Club to the Price Club”: "When I was younger I wanted to be the middleweight boxing champ of the world. Acting only came around when we didn't have any money and I knew I didn't want to work at the Price Club for the rest of my life. The only thing I was even mediocre at, at the time, was acting. So I moved to Los Angeles." Now that you are putting your teen-icon years behind you, is there any character you aspire to play? “My dream is to play Spider-Man or a superhero like that. I learned how to read reading comic books. Literally my whole life is cartoons and comic books, so that’s kind of my dream.”