Freddie James Prinze (born March 8, 1976) is an American actor, perhaps best known for his leading roles in teen-oriented films.
Prinze was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Katherine Elaine Cochran (a real-estate agent) and Freddie Prinze, an American actor and comedian who died in 1977, after Elaine left him and filed a restraining order against him. (Prinze was just 10 months old at the time). His father's death was originally termed a suicide but later ruled an accident, as he was under the influence of quaaludes. Prinze's paternal grandfather Karl Pruetzel was a German immigrant and his paternal grandmother was Puerto Rican; he was raised a Roman Catholic and embraces his Puerto Rican heritage .
Prinze grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Puerto Rico. He learned about Spanish and Puerto Rican culture from his paternal grandmother's Puerto Rican family. He showed an interest in acting from an early age and attended La Cueva High School in Albuquerque, which he described in interviews as a painful experience. Having an interest in drama, he joined the Albuquerque Children's Theatre and the Duo Drama Company. His interest in acting led to his first job as a puppeteer at a local nursing home, where Prinze spent hours critiquing the art of entertainment. As one elderly man later said to reporters, "[Freddy] was a natural. He breathed life into those puppets." After graduating from high school in 1994, Prinze moved to Los Angeles to audition for television roles.
Prinze was cast in a guest role on the ABC TV series Family Matters in 1995. He then appeared on a few special programs and made-for-TV movies, before making his motion picture debut in To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday in 1996.In subsequent years, Prinze experienced much success appearing in youth-oriented movies. I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and its sequel, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998), made him well-known among teenage audiences and his first leading role, the romantic comedy She's All That (1999), was very successful at the box office, grossing $63 million in the United States.
Subsequently, Prinze had leading roles in Wing Commander (1999), Down to You (2000), Boys and Girls (2000), Head Over Heels (2001) and Summer Catch (2001), most of which were generally disliked by critics and had moderate box office performances . In 2000, he was named one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People in the World".
In 2002, he played Fred Jones in the live film version of the popular cartoon, Scooby-Doo, and repeated the role in the 2004 sequel, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. He starred in both Scooby-Doo movies alongside his wife, Sarah Michelle Gellar. He guest starred on the popular NBC show, Friends, as a sensitive male nanny named Sandy. He also appeared as Donny Crane, a character believed to be Denny Crane's son in the ABC legal drama Boston Legal.
Prinze starred in his own television sitcom, titled Freddie. The sitcom is said to depict some actual events from his life. The show lasted one season (fall 2005 - spring 2006) before being canceled in May 2006.
In the mid-1990s Prinze dated actress Kimberly McCullough for more than three years. Prinze married actress Sarah Michelle Gellar on September 1, 2002 in Jalisco, Mexico, south of Puerto Vallarta. The couple met several years beforehand, while filming I Know What You Did Last Summer but started dating in 2000 and were engaged in April 2001.
Prinze is trained in several forms of martial arts, and enjoys tap dancing and collecting comic books. He is an avid soccer fan and supports the team Arsenal F.C., and is a fan of East Asian cinema. Prinze received a katana from Gellar in 2004 that she bought in Japan while filming The Grudge.
It has been claimed that Prinze and his wife are GOP (Republican) supporters.
