Eddie Kaye Thomas

Eddie Kaye Thomas had been a working actor for seven years before most people first noticed him. Born in New York City in 1980, he was on television from 1992 in guest roles, and took a supporting part in the horror sequel The Rage: Carrie 2 before he turned nineteen. Then American Pie (1999) handed him Paul Finch and defined the next thirteen years.

Finch is the best-written character in that film and Thomas is the reason. The joke is a teenager conducting himself like a forty-five-year-old man of letters, and it only lands because Thomas delivers every line as though the character has rehearsed it in a mirror, with the vocabulary treated as armour rather than affectation. He returned for American Pie 2, American Wedding and American Reunion, with more to do each time.

The durable career, though, is the one built away from that franchise, and it is mostly voice and television. He has voiced Barry Robinson on American Dad! since 2005, which is now two decades of the same character, and played Toby Curtis across CBS's Scorpion. In between: Rosenberg in all three Harold & Kumar films, Jesus in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, Adam in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Freddy Brody in Freddy Got Fingered.

It is an unglamorous but genuinely successful career shape. He has never had a lead film role of consequence and has almost never been out of work, which is the trade most of the American Pie cast did not manage.