What to Know
While some child actors like Drew Barrymore and Demi Lovato continue to work in the entertainment industry as adults, others tend to stay out of the spotlight once they get older. Taran Noah Smith, who was just 7 years old when Home Improvement started, is one of those actors. He portrayed Mark, the youngest son on the show, and basically stopped working in the entertainment industry after the series ended in 1999.
Because most fans of Home Improvement haven’t seen Taran in years, many were shocked to see what he looked like when he appeared on The Best Show with Tom Scharpling podcast this year. (According to The Sun, Taran hadn’t appeared on camera in 14 years.)
At age 41, he obviously looks very different. (He has long, curly hair and a beard.) While on the podcast, he also talked about his relationship with his on-screen brothers, Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Zachery Ty Bryan. Jonathan left the show before the series ended and kind of “pulled back” from his on-screen brothers as well, Taran explained on the podcast. At that point, he and Zach grew closer. At the same time, they were “so different” from each other. He made it very clear that they haven’t stayed in touch.
“He always seemed like he had a good heart under some of his strange behaviors,” Taran said. “But now, if you don’t know, he’s had a lot of trouble over the last few years with getting multiple DUIs and multiple domestic violence charges, so I’ve not seen him since any of that has come out, and I don’t want to.”
During the podcast episode, the hosts also asked about Mark’s goth phase on Home Improvement. Taran made it clear that the “goth storyline” for his character Mark was definitely not his idea. When he and his on-screen brothers were younger, they often picked on him. But once they got older, this made a lot less sense.
“The whole storyline of the older brothers beating up on me or teasing me didn’t really work anymore because I was taller than both of them,” Taran explained. “Over the break between season six and season seven, the decision was made to make me gothic.”
Taran added that he later discovered this decision might’ve been made because of something one of the show’s writers was dealing with in real life with his own son. “After about halfway through the season, I’m in wardrobe, black fingernails and dog collar and all this stuff on, and I went backstage and came face to face with his son, who was not in wardrobe, but looked just like me,” he said.
Understandably, the encounter felt pretty awkward, as it made Taran realize that his character was maybe the writer’s way of processing what was happening with his own child at the time.
