Biography
Erik von Detten built up a large preteen fan base, appearing frequently on the small screen in TV movies and as a regular on the Disney Channel series "So Weird" (1999), as well as playing Wally in the 1997 feature update of the legendary sitcom "Leave it to Beaver," before a starring role on ABC's "Odd Man Out" (1999-2000) exposed the young actor to a much larger audience. Von Detten began his career at an early age, years before his sunbleached hair and California boy good looks would appear regularly in the pages of teenage pin-up magazines. He made his film debut with a small role as a choirboy in the holiday feature "All I Want for Christmas" (1991) before landing a regular part on the NBC daytime drama "Days of Our Lives" at age eight. Von Detten spent nearly two years on the soap in the role of Nicholas Alamain, a young boy whose natural mother was buried alive by zany villain Vivian, the boy's foster mother. The actor went on to appear in several TV-movies, often playing the sensitive son of the troubled main characters when not taking the lead role in productions aimed at children. In 1994 he played a boy whose mother becomes obsessed with destroying his father following their divorce in the fact-based drama "In The Best of Families: Marriage, Pride and Murder" (CBS). In the following year's "A Season of Hope" (also CBS), he was featured as the child of JoBeth Williams and Stephen Lang, a couple in crisis due to a lemon grove disease that threatens their crops and their livelihood. Among his starring roles are playing half of a pair of children with mysterious powers in a 1995 remake of "Escape To Witch Mountain" (aired as an ABC Family Movie) and a self-absorbed boy who, in an idea borrowed from the feature "Groundhog Day," must relive Christmas over and over again until he realizes the true meaning of the holiday in The Family Channel's holiday fable "Christmas Every Day" (1996), He played the titular champion in-line skater in "Brink!" (1998), a Disney Channel modern adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's "Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates." In 1999, the actor was featured as a teenage boy struggling with his father's infidelity and the break up of his parents' marriage in the CBS TV movie "Replacing Dad."
