Only 10 when the show premiered in 1991, Thomas, who played the middle child, spent the next eight years grew up in front of an international audience, reaching a stratospheric level of fame as a teen heartthrob to millions of adoring young girls.

“You are a part of their life, and there is a lot that is owed them,” he told the New York Times of his rabid popularity. “But it’s difficult because you want to make everyone happy, but if you try to do that, you’re setting yourself up for failure.”

In 1994, the Pennsylvania-born Thomas, 12, voiced Simba in the hugely successful Disney animated film The Lion King, a film that made fans laugh, cry and sing.

“Simba’s like me,” says Thomas, who used his regular voice to play the little lion in the smash hit. “I just put my natural energy into it. Real curious, fun-loving, always getting into mischief.”

Switching his time between The Lion King and Randy Taylor on Home Improvement, Thomas shares that it was two years of being shuttled back on forth from one set to the next.

“I had to kind of go, ‘Oops! Time to be Randy’…’Oops! Time to be Simba,’” Thomas told People in 1994. “You have to prepare yourself to become this totally different person. I mean, we’re not lions, right?”