What Santa Clause child star looks like over 30 years later as he issues rare life update
Topics: Christmas, Film and TV, Nostalgia
Liv Bridge
Featured Image Credit: Walt Disney Studios.
Topics: Christmas, Film and TV, Nostalgia
The child star of The Santa Clause movie has given fans a rare life update.
It's been more than 30 years since the Christmas movie starring Tim Allen graced theaters and our home video collection in 1994. The movie follows the plot of Allen's character, Scott Calvin, a divorced marketing executive of a toy company, after he accidentally startles Santa to fall from a roof on Christmas Eve.
Believing Saint Nick has died in the tragedy, Scott has to finish the job while wearing the big red suit, which comes with a legal technicality, known as 'the Santa Clause', essentially forcing him to become the new Santa.
The feel-good family comedy was an instant hit with audiences in the 1990s and now, the child star, Eric Lloyd, who played Scott's eight-year-old son, Charlie Calvin, has given us a nostalgic update.
Advert
Speaking to Entertainment Tonight, the 39-year-old actor reacted to clips of his younger self on the set with Allen, including an interview in 1994 where he appeared to cut the interview short.
After describing the film as about 'parents listening to their kids and a lot of people believing in magic,' young Lloyd declared suddenly: "Well, gotta go! Bye!"
Laughing out loud at the video, a now adult Lloyd in his 30s said: "I must not have liked interviews!"
Well, perhaps because of the limelight, after The Santa Clause, the actor has appeared in very little movies since.
Now, he explained to the outlet that he works in the music industry instead, having opened Lloyd Production Studios in California a little more than a decade ago in 2014.
"Today, I do a lot of sound design and re-record mixing," he said.
"So I get to work from home a lot, which is really, really nice.”
However, it's clear Lloyd has a lot of fond memories from his time in front of the camera, which included the 1997 movie Batman and Robin and the '90s sitcom, Jesse. He also reprised his role as Charlie in The Santa Clause 2 (2002) and The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (2006) before appearing as a guest in the spinoff series, The Santa Clauses in 2022.
“It’s awesome, honestly, to be able to go back and see all that,” he told the outlet, adding: “So I’m so grateful that I’ve had the life I’ve had.”
Lloyd also said working closely with Allen fills him with fond memories, too.
"He was always joking on set," he said. "So making the crew and everyone laugh."
The actor said the team knew to a degree that the movie would go on to be a success, 'because Tim was involved in it,' but didn't quite know it would resonate as it did.
"It wasn't necessarily the typical holiday film back then, you know? It dealt with divorce and broken family and whatnot, it's much more normalized now but then it really wasn't.
"I feel like that's one of the reasons that it became so beloved is because it was honest and real."