Jonathan Taylor Thomas

About

Jonathan Taylor Thomas (né Weiss; born September 8, 1981) is an American actor and director. He is known for portraying Randy Taylor on Home Improvement (1991–1998) and Pinocchio in the film The Adventures of Pinocchio (1996), and voicing young Simba in the animated film The Lion King (1994).

Thomas was born Jonathan Taylor Weiss on September 8, 1981, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to Claudine (née Gonsalves) and Stephen Weiss, and later moved to Sacramento, California, and then to Los Angeles. He has an older brother, Joel (born in 1978), who works for Texas–Pan American Broncs as an assistant coach for the men’s basketball team in Edinburg, Texas. Thomas’s paternal uncle was playwright and actor Jeff Weiss (1940–2022). Thomas has Pennsylvania Dutch and Portuguese ancestry. His parents divorced when he was 10.
In 2000, Thomas enrolled at Harvard University, where he studied philosophy and history and spent his third year abroad at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. In 2010, he graduated from the School of General Studies at Columbia University.

Thomas began his television career in 1990, playing the role of Kevin Brady…