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Jonathan Taylor Thomas

American actor

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 6, 2026
Entity authorityQ460882
Source-derived summary

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).

Early life and education

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.

Career

Television

Thomas began his television career in 1990, playing the role of Kevin Brady, the son of Greg Brady, on The Bradys, a spin-off of the 1970s TV show The Brady Bunch.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Jonathan Taylor Thomas” is american actor. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Jonathan, Taylor and Thomas, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1981, 1991, 1998, 1996—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1981-09-08. For this dossier, Jonathan, Taylor and Thomas is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american actor” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q460882. VIAF identifies the subject as 37115036. The Library of Congress control number is no95040802. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981, 1991, 1998 and 1996.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Jonathan Taylor Thomas”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Jonathan Taylor Thomas primary sources, Jonathan Taylor Thomas archive and Jonathan research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Jonathan Taylor Thomas”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Jonathan Taylor Thomas” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.