With his glasses and spiky hair, Jonathan Lipnicki became a familiar face in Hollywood with the role of George Little in the Stuart Little franchise. Lipnicki had made his big screen debut at the age of 6 playing the cheerful twinkle-eyed child of a single mother in the sports-themed rom-com Jerry Maguire. Sharing screen space with Tom Cruise and his on-screen mother Renée Zellweger, Lipnicki was one of the standout stars from the 1996 film. He followed up his newfound fame playing Stuart Little’s George, the eldest son of the Little family who considers the film’s titular white mouse as his younger brother.
In the 2000s, Lipnicki retained his status as a child star with roles in The Little Vampire and Like Mike and a three-episode appearance in Dawson’s Creek. However, he seemed to have disappeared afterward. Even in the third Stuart Little installment, the 2005 animated comedy Stuart Little 3: Call of the Wild, Michael J. Fox returned to voice the mouse but Lipnicki didn’t voice George. With the actor having gone off the radar, Lipnicki began to be only ed as the Stuart Little kid with glasses. While the franchise was his claim to fame, Lipnicki has gone on to engage in some diverse projects since then.
Jonathan Lipnicki Took A Hiatus From Acting
Lipnicki actually took a break from acting during his high-school years. However, the reason behind this hiatus wasn’t focusing on just school but rather his own insecurities. In a 2022 interview with SlashFilm, Lipnicki revealed that he had begun feeling that he was just not good enough as an actor. To quote Lipnicki, “I didn’t work because I just didn’t work”
Lipnicki added that another reason behind his hiatus was that he was just not being offered any major roles at around the late-2000s. In his child with glasses persona in Jerry Maguire and Stuart Little, Lipnicki felt his acting was more natural due to many child actors having a “childlike wonder”. However, he believes that even some of the best child actors eventually come to reevaluate their acting skills as “filters come in, and you become nervous…or the world comes into play”. Lipnicki itted that he too went from “doing the natural thing” to “trying to be like my favorite actors”.
This hiatus and his high-school graduation were eventually followed by an introduction to theater that allowed him to explore the technicalities of acting. As he told SlashFilm, “I always loved it [theater], but I found a new, renewed type of love for it.” Taking beginners’ acting classes and eventually working his way through it, Lipnicki’s first theater project was understudying for two different roles in Martin McDonagh’s play The Lieutenant of Inishmore. Since then, Lipnicki has tried to step out of his Stuart Little shadow and progressed to ing roles in multi-genre movies and guest appearances in reality shows.
Lipnicki Appeared In Several Reality Shows
A decade after his debut in Jerry Maguire, Lipnicki appeared as himself for an episode of Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List, the Emmy-winning reality series that depicted the rise of its titular comedian and self-proclaimed “D-lister”. As Griffin tries to make her way to Hollywood, it only seemed apt to feature a then-yesteryear child star like Lipnicki. However, as Lipnicki transitioned to adulthood, the California native started appearing on several reality shows. This included appearances in the celebrity rap battle royale Drop the Mic, the dating reality show Celebs Go Dating and the cooking series titled Worst Cooks in America.
In a Drop the Mic episode, Lipnicki indulged in a rap battle against Boy Meets World star Danielle Fishel. Lipnicki started off strongly, joking about her past relationship with NSYNC member Lance Bass. But Fishel emerged as the winner with some personally hurtful jabs on Lipnicki’s time as the child star with glasses. “You got famous from one line, and, yeah, we enjoyed it. Now the only line you’re famous for is unemployment.” Fishel rapped, referencing Lipnicki’s famous Jerry Maguire quote about the weight of the human head. Taking on the jokes, Libnicki itted, “Danielle is amazing, and it’s really hard to stay level-headed in this business for so long.”
Celebs Go Dating, the British dating reality show that invited single celebrities to find true love through an exclusive dating agency, included Lipnicki in its Series 4 lineup. He hit it off pretty well with then-girlfriend Becca Mason and the Stuart Little star even flew her to LA to make her meet his family. Unfortunately, Mason called it quits after flying back to the UK for undisclosed reasons (via Tyla). A year after this breakup, Lipnicki competed in the 2019 Celebrity Edition of Worst Cooks in America. With his dishes placed at the bottom in the first three episodes, Lipnicki was eliminated in the next one.
Lipnicki Is A Trained Mixed Martial Artist
Lipnicki is quite active on Instagram, regularly posting updates on his workouts and martial arts routines. The actor is a trained MMA practitioner and holds a black belt in the martial art Brazilian jiu-jiutsu. As reported by TMZ, Lipnicki also began to use his fighting skills to help defend the Orthodox Jewish community from anti-seminitic hate crimes. When some Jewish men were attacked outside an LA restaurant in 2021, Lipnicki began setting up makeshift stations outside synagogues in LA to ensure the protection of Jewish worshippers. “It’s just people wanting to help other people [...] Everyone should have the right to worship without being discriminated against.” Lipnicki said.
Lipnicki Has Since Returned To Acting
Having lost the glasses and changing his appearance, Lipnicki is virtually unrecognizable from his years as a child star. In 2013, he had a brief credit in the action crime drama For The Love of Money as “Young Yoni”, the younger version of a character played by Joshua Biton. The film starred James Caan along with Edward Furlong (who played young John Connor in Terminator 2). His tryst with the action genre continued with the 2014 direct-to-DVD action film Bad Asses. A sequel to Bad Ass, Bad Asses, featured Danny Trejo and Danny Glover as aged men, who train young boxers and wipe out crime in their neighborhood.
Lipnicki had a ing role in Bad Asses as a troublemaker simply called “Hammer”. The actor went on to show his toned physique with his character, indulging in a few angry outbursts, a far cry from Ray in Jerry Maguire or George in Stuart Little. In the television space, Lipnicki has appeared as himself in an episode of the sitcom, Secret Girlfriend, and the adult animated comedy Glenn Martin DDS. Lipnicki’s love for movies can also be seen from live sketch comedy shows such as Protected Under Parody, in which he parodies two movies (Donnie Darko and Empire Records being featured in a prominent performance) by mixing them into one.
