Jonathan Taylor Thomas took a step back from Hollywood at the peak of his career and left behind many girls lusting for the teen superstar when he was known as JTT.
Jonathan Taylor Thomas who turned 43 on September 8, appeared in 2023, and the people who had a crush on him at the time of his teen, were surprised by his appearance.
What happened? why the actor who famously voiced Simba in Disney’s 1994 film The Lion King! suddenly left the spotlight.
He appeared as Greg Brady’s son on the short-lived 1990 TV series The Bradys, a spinoff of The Brady Bunch, Taylor Thomas got the role on Home Improvement, which comedian Tim Allen performed.
When Jonathan Taylor was 10 the show premiered in 1991, Thomas played the role of the middle child and spent the next eight years growing up in front of an international audience. Before the eyes of the audience, he reached the extreme level of fame that he became the crush of many girls at that time.
“You are a part of their life, and a lot is owed them,” he told the New York Times of his rabid popularity. “But it’s difficult because you want to make everyone happy, but if you try to do that, you’re setting yourself up for failure.”
”The Home Improvement Star”, Thomas when he was just 12, voiced in Simba, a ratted Disney animated movie The Lion King. This movie at the same time compels people to laugh, sing, and cry.
“Simba’s like me,” says Thomas, who used his regular voice to play the little lion in the smash hit. “I just put my natural energy into it. Real curious, fun-loving, always getting into mischief.”
Shifting his time between The Lion King and Randy Taylor on Home Improvement, Thomas shares that it was two years of traveling to and fro on forth from one set to the next.
“I had to kind of go, ‘Oops! Time to be Randy’…’ Oops! Time to be Simba,’” Thomas told People in 1994. “You have to prepare yourself to become this totally different person. I mean, we’re not lions, right?”
After leaving Home Improvement before its final season, in 1998, Thomas took a step back from the limelight.
“I can’t tell you how many shows I’ve done with full-blown migraine headaches,” he says of his exhaustion. “I’d been going nonstop since I was 8 years old…I wanted to go to school, to travel, and have a bit of a break.”
In the following years, he appeared in guest roles in several TV series like Ally McBeal, Smallville, and 8 Simple Rules and loaned his voice to animated characters on The Wild Thornberrys and The Simpsons.
Before resigning, he performed some apprehensive roles as a bisexual hustler in the indie film Speedway Junky (1999) and as a persecuted gay teen in Showtime’s Common Ground (2000).
These roles directly influenced his personality and sparked rumors about his sexuality which he gently refused while speaking with Jay Leno.
“Pretty much in Hollywood, you’re not anyone until it’s rumored that you’re gay, so I wasn’t that upset about it,” Thomas, then 17, told the host. “Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but they’re rumors and you should always be kind of careful with that internet stuff.”
When Leno directly asked if he was gay, Thomas replied, “No, no, no, no, I’m not. I’m not.”
Later speaking with The Advocate, he again voted down the rumors, which he explains started on a website called CyberSleaze.
“It was just a blatant lie put on the internet and then it was like a feeding frenzy. And I’m sure it was validated by my recent roles,” Thomas said. “What startled me was how willingly people accepted it.”
He was the heartthrob of many girls but when he decided to leave Hollywood to fulfill his dreams of “going to school.”
He did his graduation from Chaminade College Preparatory School of New York in 2000, after this he went to Harvard University, where he studied philosophy and history. He later graduated from the Columbia University School of General Studies in 2010.
“To sit in a big library amongst books and students, that was pretty cool. It was a novel experience for me,” he says.
Accepting that he “never took the fame too seriously” he expresses his gratitude, saying “It was a great period in my life…But it doesn’t define me.”
He continued, “When I think back on the time, I look at it with a wink. I focus on the good moments I had, not that I was on a lot of magazine covers.”
Thomas said that he was just using his free time and he was not sorrowful about his decision to leave Hollywood.
But he didn’t completely leave the Hollywood. Between 2013 to 2015, the superstar rejoined with Allen, his TV dad from Home Improvement, for four episodes of Last Man Standing. He also directed three episodes of the series.
In 2023, the darling star was seen with his dogs and his look again filled a super excitement among fans.
Thomas kept his outfit simple and was seen wearing a beige sweater that he wore with jeans and a black tuque.
Fans quickly responded in the comment section and said;
“JTT, my elementary school crush,” gushes one fan while a second adds, “Like many others my age, he was my childhood crush. I’m glad he avoided the Hollywood weirdness.”
Another said, “He was a child star and a teen heartthrob, who knows what happened to him. Hollywood rarely treats children well.”
Another fan was also lost in his hairstyle in Home Improvement, “Of course, he looks different now! Not many 42-year-old men walking around with bowl haircuts. He brought much joy to many with his early career.
Jonathan Taylor Thomas worked very little in Hollywood but he earned much fame in a very short period.