Freddie Prinze Jr. Says He 'Didn’t Love Acting Because of What the Business Had Done to My Dad'

The ’90s heartthrob explained how working with Parker Posey in 'The House of Yes' changed all that

Freddie Prinze Jr. is opening up about how he learned to love acting after his father’s tragic experience in Hollywood.

On the most recent episode of the Oldish podcast, the I Know What You Did Last Summer star explained to hosts Randy Spelling, Brian Austin Green and Sharna Burgess that his mother discouraged him from acting from a young age.

“When I was a kid, my mom was like, ‘Absolutely not. It's just not gonna be your life,’ ” Prinze Jr., now 48, said. “That was my dad's life, and it didn't end well. And so, she didn't want me to have anything to do with it.”

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Prinze Jr.’s father, comedian Freddie Prinze, rose to fame in the ’70s with appearances on talk shows before co-starring in the first three seasons of the NBC sitcom Chico and the Man. However, he struggled with depression and died by an apparent suicide at age 22 in 1977, though his death was later ruled medication-induced and accidental due in part to an overprescription of the tranquilizer Quaalude, per the Washington Post.

Prinze Jr. said that it wasn’t until his family was in “financial dire straits” that he decided to try to make a living as an actor. “It happened really quick,” he said of his own rise to fame in the ’90s in teen-centric films like She’s All That. “I kinda got rocket-shipped to where I ended up.”

While a love of acting didn’t come along with success, he explained, one of his earliest film roles gave him a glimpse of what that could be like. In the 1997 black comedy The House of Yes, Prinze Jr. starred opposite Parker Posey, who played a mentally ill woman with a fixation on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

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“I was working with Parker, and she was just on this level that I was like, ‘I can't do that,’ ” Prinze Jr. recalled. “And so it was inspirational, but intimidating at the same time.”

“I didn't love acting because of what the business had done to my dad,” he continued. “And [Posey] was the first person that I ever saw love it. And I was just like, ‘How does she have this much passion?’ ”

Even then, Prinze Jr. said, it took him “probably 20 years to figure out why she cared so much.”

Related: One Last Thing with Freddie Prinze Jr.: Actor Teases New Movie with She’s All That Costar Rachael Leigh Cook (Exclusive)

“But I finally did. I got it, and then I fell in love with the business,” he explained. “But it was a long affair of just liking the business and not having the same passion that she had and always wondering why. And then one day, it just clicked. You know? You just, you do the right role, and all of a sudden, you go, ‘Oh, now I know how to be vulnerable. Now I know how to be funny. Now I know how to, you know, do the action movie.’ ”

“It took a role to kinda bring it out of me,” he added. “And maybe it did with [Posey] too. I'm not sure. Maybe she was just born to love it, but she was the one who inspired me to stay at it.”