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What
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Page 1|2
by
Tom Hens
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Chad
Allen, whose full name is Chad Allen Lazzari, was
born on June 5, 1974,in Cerritos, California, and grew up
in Long Beach, CA. He was the youngestof four boys, and his
parents were hoping for a girl. They got one, in the shape
of Chad's twin sister, Charity. Chad was the "extra change",
as he puts it. He got his start in show business when his
mother started entering him and his twin sister Charity in
"twin contests" at fairs, and they won quite a few times.
People kept telling his mother how cute he and his sister
looked together, and that she should try to get the twins
into acting. It was very quickly clear that Charity didn't
like the business at all, but Chad was bitten by the acting
bug. It was decided that Chad Lazzari sounded like a name
for a dark-haired italian, not a blond, blue-eyed boy, and
he started out on his acting career as Chad Allen instead.
His first job was in a MacDonalds television commercial, at
age four. |
He
also did commercials for the Masters of Universe toys where
he was young He-Man. His first dramatic work came at age six,
in a pilot for a television series that never went into production,
"Cutter to Houston". His first big break in a television series
happened when he was 8 and joined the cast of
"St. Elsewhere" as Tommy Westphall, an autistic
boy. He played that character literally until the very end,
when he was the last actor on-screen in the final scene of
the final episode of "St. Elsewhere" in1988. At the same time,
he worked continuously (and sometimes simultaneously) on a
succession of other successful TV shows: "Webster"
(1985-1986), "Our House"(1986-1988)
and "My Two Dads" (1989-1890).
He also guest-starred on a whole host of other television
shows, such as "Airwolf", "Hunter", "The Wonder Years", "Star
Trek, The Next Generation","In the Heat of the Night", "Highway
to Heaven", "Simon and Simon", and appeared in ten television
movies.
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He
also appeared in several stage productions, as a guest on
TV game shows and in a series of public serviceanti-drug programs.During
these years, Chad became one of the biggest teen idols of
the day, thanks to, as he later said, "a mega publicist, who
put out an image of me that seemed ideal." He couldn't go
anywhere in public without being pursued by fans. As Chad
put it later: "It was difficult going to the malls, ortrying
to do the things I wanted to do. I felt bad in that the teenmagazines
portrayed me as a perfect teenager." y the time My Two Dads
ended in 1990, Chad was unsure about whether he wanted to
go on with acting. He was 16 years old, and even though he
had gone to a normal primary school, he hadn't been to a regular
school since age 12 ,instead being taught by private tutors
on the set. He felt he was missing out on a lot of normal
life.
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