Chris O’Donnell

Okay, so he’s not one of the people you think of these days when you think Chris, and I’ll freely admit he’s replacing a Chris who I found out supports Graham Linehan. Support transphobia, don’t get covered for the column. (I’m sure that other Chris is crushed.) But you know, Chris O’Donnell was quite the teen idol when I was actually a teen. He was one of the many Wholesome-Looking White Dudes who have arisen over the decades. (Chris Hemsworth is two years too young to qualify and will be until I lower the age again in about a year.) He’s not the most famous guy going these days, and that’s fine, but he seems nice enough and I looked to find bad things about him just in case.

He is, as he appears, a middle class German-Irish guy from Winnetka, Illinois. His father was the general manager of WBBM-AM, Chicago’s CBS radio affiliate for news. He is the youngest of seven; yes, they’re Catholic. He attended Loyola Academy, and by the age of thirteen, he was modeling. As a teenager, he started acting, though he continued in school as well, graduating from Boston College with a BS in marketing.

That was in 1992, the same year he was the charming Buddy Threadgoode in Fried Green Tomatoes. It was a minor role but an important one. That same year, he was third-billed in School Ties, with Brendan Fraser and Matt Damon, and of course second-billed in Scent of a Woman. While that last is best-remembered today for being the source of many an Al Pacino meme, it’s still quite a role for a young and fairly unknown actor.

In 1993, I went on my first-ever date to see The Three Musketeers, with O’Donnell as D’Artagnan. I won’t say it’s a good movie—though I haven’t seen it in a very long time and can’t say how well it holds up—but it’s a fun movie. So okay, O’Donnell is probably currently the fifth-best-known actor in it and at the time was even lower, under Rebecca De Mornay, but again, an impressive role for a new actor, given two of his costars were legacy famous but still known for being talented and one was Tim Curry.

I’m also an advocate for him in Circle of Friends, which deserves to be better remembered than it is. And I did see him as Robin in the theatre twice—both times for Batman Forever. (He says making Batman Forever was fun and Batman and Robin was not.) His career since then has been fine—over three hundred episodes of assorted shows of the NCIS franchise, it seems. So maybe he’s not in the running for Best Chris, but I’m fairly sure he’s not in the running for Worst Chris, either.