You'll Barely Recognize Erik Von Detten From Brink Now
By Matthew Martinez
Von Detten got his big break at ten years old, playing the youngest version of Nicholas Alamain, a boy with serious parental/guardian drama, from 1992-93. For the next twenty years, he maintained a steady stream of work as a guest actor in television shows —including ER (1995), 7th Heaven (1996), 8 Simple Rules (2004), and Bones (2008)— and especially as a voice actor.
Von Detten voiced evil kid Sid in the Toy Story films, a character in Recess for 10 episodes from 1997-2000, a character in an animated Tarzan series, and has lent his voice to many other animated projects. Along the way, he starred in several live-action shows, including the 1999 ABC sitcom Odd Man Out, the 1999 Disney Channel sci-fi mystery So Weird, the ABC fantasy series Dinotopia (A 2002 follow-up to a miniseries), and the 2004 ABC sitcom Complete Savages. Although all those shows were short-lived, he didn't need them to create his legacy as a heartthrob. That came from film roles.
For example, in the 1997 comedy Leave it to Beaver, which was based on the classic '50s and '60s sitcom of the same name, von Detten played Wallace "Wally" Cleaver, the older brother of main character Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver. A year later came Brink! In the Disney Channel movie, von Detten played title character Andy "Brink" Brinker. Brink betrays his skating crew, his best friends, and his principles to make money for his family by joining a rival group. Though it was only a television movie, it's one of the most beloved Disney Channel original movies of the era.
Brink! made him a heartthrob, but truly cementing his place in history as such was his role in the timeless, adored 2001 rom-com The Princess Diaries. Leaning into his pretty-boy image, von Detten played Josh Bryant, the high school peer Anne Hathaway's main character Mia Thermopolis pines for — until he proves conniving and selfish. Josh came out a loser, but audiences couldn't help swooning a little for von Detten.
