There was a point in the ‘90s when some famous faces seemed to be everywhere, but nowadays, we’ve forgotten all about them.
The face of seaQuest
It was pretty hard to escape Jonathan Brandis during the early ‘90s because it felt like he was in practically everything. He played Bastian in The NeverEnding Story II and then showed up again in Ladybugs. He also became Lucas Wolenczak on NBC’s seaQuest DSV.
He was a really big star for teenage viewers, and the Los Angeles Times actually reported he received about 4,000 fan letters every week. But then the acting jobs dried up. He stopped appearing in so many big roles, and then, in 2003, he died at age 27. His death was ruled a suicide.
Nickelodeon’s superpowered teenager
Larisa Oleynik basically owned Nickelodeon for a few years. She starred in The Secret World of Alex Mack beginning in 1994, where she played a teenager with special powers. Her role in The Baby-Sitters Club followed shortly, and she played Bianca Stratford in 10 Things I Hate About You.
Oleynik did continue acting after the decade was over, but none of her roles matched those in the ‘90s and early ‘00s. She made a few appearances in Mad Men and Pretty Little Liars, along with Netflix’s The Healing Powers of Dude. The backward cap and chemical powers were long gone.
The teen-magazine regular
You’ll probably recognize Andrew Keegan’s face before you recognize his name. He was in quite a few ‘90s favorites, like Camp Nowhere, Party of Five, 7th Heaven, and 10 Things I Hate About You. He appeared on a bunch of teen-magazine covers, too.
Keegan continued to act, but became more involved in a community group called Full Circle. The group hosts dinners and talks, as well as spiritual events. It wasn’t exactly where you’d expect ‘Joey Donner’ to end up, but still.
The kid from the sandlot
There was no cooler kid in The Sandlot than Benny ‘The Jet’ Rodriguez. Mike Vitar was the actor underneath his baseball cap. In fact, the 1993 movie became Vitar’s signature role, although he also played Luis Mendoza in D2: The Mighty Ducks and D3: The Mighty Ducks.
But it wasn’t to last. Vitar left acting while he was relatively young and decided to become a firefighter in Los Angeles instead. By 2015, he’d already spent over a decade with the department.
One very big ‘Crush’
Jennifer Paige’s career rise was pretty meteoric. Her debut single, ‘Crush,’ came out in 1998, and it became a major radio hit that reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song’s success apparently caught her record label by surprise.
Paige did continue to release music, yet none of her releases came close to the reach of her debut single. Paige’s most recent album came in 2017 and was titled Starflower. It was funded by her fans.
The orange-haired pop star
Vitamin C was another pop star you couldn’t really miss, especially around the turn of the millennium. Her bright orange hair really stood out, and her single ‘Graduation (Friends Forever)’ was the soundtrack for many school events. Her real name is Colleen Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick had actually been making music before her Vitamin C character took off.
‘Smile,’ for example, was an early hit, and then ‘Graduation’ followed in 2000. She then transitioned to more of a management role in 2012, when she became Nickelodeon’s vice president of music. The singer focused on recording, production, and performances for the network.
The kid who met the Sanderson sisters
Hocus Pocus is a movie that practically every ‘90s kid rewatches every October, and Omri Katz was one of its stars. But he was already familiar to anyone who saw Eerie, Indiana because he played Marshall Teller in it. He became Max Dennison in Hocus Pocus in 1993.
Katz decided to eventually step away from acting and kept a much lower profile, although he has appeared at some Hocus Pocus events. He’s been a fixture in Salem every year since then.
Clarissa’s scheming little brother
Ferguson Darling from Clarissa Explains It All was the kind of kid who could turn breakfast into a negotiation. Jason Zimbler played him for all five seasons of the show. He had to juggle school with filming in Florida at the time, but once the show ended, he mostly walked away from acting.
Zimbler went on to study at the University of Notre Dame and began working in software at HBO. It’s kind of funny to think that Ferguson Darling could make such a sharp left turn from annoying Clarissa for a living.
Somehow on every teen show
David Lascher’s face was in almost every teen show during the ‘90s. He was Ted in Hey Dude and Vinnie in Blossom. He appeared on Beverly Hills, 90210 and had a recurring role as Josh on Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
Lascher was the kind of guy whose face you could recognize, but maybe not his name. He eventually left the industry, although he didn’t completely leave the decade behind. No, he and former Hey Dude co-star Christine Taylor launched the podcast Hey Dude… The 90s Called.
The voice behind ‘Kiss the Rain’
‘Kiss the Rain’ was another song that was everywhere for a while, although the song’s singer, Billie Myers, became a little easier to forget. The song came from her debut album Growing, Pains, and climbed to No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was Myers’s biggest American hit.
While she did keep recording afterward, none of her U.S. singles reached quite that level. She released the album Tea & Sympathy years later through her own label and continued performing.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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