Freddie Prinze Jr. was born with the acting gene; he is the son of the late “Chico and the Man” actor Freddie Prinze, who died in January 1977 when he was still a baby. The younger Prinze began acting professionally as a teen. After his “Friends” role, he starred in the hit “Scooby-Doo” live-action movie, playing the main Mystery Machine driver Fred Jones. He also played the title character in the 2005 sitcom “Freddie” and made cameos on “Boston Legal,” “The George Lopez Show,” and more before lending his voice to a string of video games and animated features. A lifelong pro wrestling fan, he also spent some time with WWE as a writer and producer.
What Prinze didn’t do was take lead roles on TV or in films for a decade-long stretch. After marrying Sarah Michelle Gellar, Prinze scaled back on work and became a Sandy of sorts as he focused on raising their kids, Charlotte and Rocky. “When my daughter was born, I wanted to be a full-time dad. I didn’t grow up with one so that was always the most important thing to me,” the actor said in a 2022 interview on “The Talk.”
Even during his hiatus, Prinze was offered lead roles, mostly in romantic comedies. “I was just never reading any of the scripts. I didn’t have any interest in doing it,” he told Esquire in 2022. But that same year, Prinze was lured back onscreen by a role as the head of a Latino family in the Netflix rom-com “Christmas With You.” He told “The Talk” co-hosts that he had never had the chance to play a father before and wanted to show off his real-life experience.
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