Did you know that I'm the surprise celebrity guest?

By Jonathan Lipnicki

Hi everyone! Most of you probably remember me as a young child in the Jerry Maguire and Stuart Little movies. I don't blame you, lol. But as you can see from the two pictures I'm going to show you I have changed a lot. Glenn asked me to write a column for his website and since we've been off and on pen pals for a while I wanted to help. He originally wrote into my fan club when I was 10 and we've been friends ever since.

This is what I used to look like


This is what I look like now!

I like that you all have a website on the internet here. I was born in 1990 and have grown on computers and can't imagine trying to sell anything without a website - including myself! Unfortunately, my website JonathanLipnicki.com isn't online right now because I'm having someone redesign it. I was thinking about adding a blog to it. What do you think? I guess this is sort of my "test" entry for a new blog I might have there.

So what to talk about... first of all, I guess I'll tell a story from when I worked on the Little Vampire. Like for all of my roles, I tried to study and really become the character before we started filming. I couldn't really become a vampire so I read a lot of books about vampires and even watched some other vampire movies (at least the ones my mom would let me, because remember I was 10 at the time). Anyway on the first day of shooting I thought it would be a great joke to pretend like I was a real vampire and drink blood in front of everyone. It may not sound too smart now, but I was only 10! Plus my mom usually vetoes my bad ideas but she wasn't there that day. Anyway, I took a big bite in the neck of one of the production assistants and started drinking her blood. Everyone threw a fit! It sounded funny at the time though. She ended up being okay and just needed some stitches so I didn't get in trouble. The moral of that story is I think that you should get really into a role but do it by researching not by actually biting someone's neck.

Another thing to talk about from the movie sets: Lil' Bow Wow is a jerk! Maybe he's nicer now, but he was one of the most frustrating actors I have ever worked with - and I worked with Tom Cruise! He used to push me around because I was smaller than he was and call me "the little pussy." I think that was a reference to The Little Vampire so I'll give him some points for creativity but it was really unprofessional. I would never have acted in a straight to video release like Like Mike 2 anyway, but if they had asked me I would have said no just because I had such a bad time on the first one. It was great to meet basketball players like Dirk Nowitzki though. He sometimes lets me come to his parties where there are cocaine and high priced call girls.

On a topic slightly less related to call girls, I want to suggest everyone check out the NBA's Read to Achieve Program. As you can see on my wikipedia entry and hopefully on my website soon, I have been really involved in this for a while now because I love basketball and I love reading. This is a great program that encourages kids to read any and all books that are directly related to basketball, such as Jim Carroll's The Basketball Diaries or Wilt Chamberlain's autobiography.

Besides my charity work with the NBA, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and other important causes like that, I guess the future will probably hold some more movies in store for me. I still have problems getting type cast as just a cute little kid even though now I'm 18 years old. I can vote, smoke cigarettes, drink, or join the army but it's hard to find good roles for something like a high school movie. Most of the "kids" in those movies are played by people in their early to mid twenties. I was offered a part in the next Twilight movie and I'm thinking about taking it. I'd be playing another vampire but I'd rather be typecast as a blood sucker than a little kid or a Jew - though I guess the second is pretty similar.

In closing, I'd like to contradict what I just said (lol) and leave you with the scene that made me famous, where I ask Tom Cruise if he knows the human head weighs eight pounds and if he knows my neighbor has three rabbits. I was the one cutely asking him the questions back then, but now any time I run into him the shoe is on the other foot. "Hey Jon, great to see you! Did YOU know... that we all have at least three body thetans inside of us that need to be removed?"

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This is JL, signing off. Don't forget to check out JonathanLipnicki.com when it comes back online!