Please Rewind Talent Wall

Alex D. Linz

Alex D. Linz built a compact acting career around the particular demands of being a young performer: carrying family comedies, working opposite established stars and moving between television, film and voice work. Born on January 3, 1989, in Santa Barbara, California, he made his professional debut in a 1995 episode of Cybill. That same year, he briefly played Phillip Chancellor IV on The Young and the Restless. His feature-film career gained momentum with One Fine Day in 1996, in which he played the son of Michelle Pfeiffer’s character. The following year brought his breakthrough as the lead of Home Alone 3. Taking over a series so closely associated with its earlier cast was a difficult assignment, and the film received a lukewarm response, but it established Linz as a performer capable of carrying a large studio comedy while still a child. In 2001, he took another leading role as the title character in Disney’s Max Keeble’s Big Move. The school comedy received mixed reviews and struggled at the box office, yet it remains central to the shape of his screen career: Linz was not merely placed at the edge of these films but asked to anchor them. His professional work has also encompassed television acting and voice acting, while his listed occupations include writing, directing and producing. Linz later followed a markedly different path. After his child-acting career, he attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he participated in the campus improv group Jericho!, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 2011. He earned a master’s degree in urban and regional planning from UCLA in 2017. As of 2023, he was working in Los Angeles as a legal researcher and lead science instructor—a career beyond the screen that makes his relatively brief run as a young movie lead feel like one distinct chapter rather than the whole story.