Breckin Meyer is the boy at the edge of the frame in 1990s teen comedy, the amiable slacker who gets a laugh and then gets out of the way. It made him easy to like and, for two decades, hard to cast as anything else.
Fi1m perspective
Watch the American teen comedies of the mid-1990s and you keep meeting the same figure near the back of the shot: a slacker or a stoner, harmless, mildly dazed, given one good line and no responsibility for the plot. That was Breckin Meyer's trade. In Clueless (1995) he is Travis Birkenstock, the skateboarding stoner, and he had already done smaller work in Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) before The Craft (1996) put him in the margins again. He has said of the Clueless audition, "I skateboarded to the audition; not for fun, but because of broke."
The part that changed his billing was Josh Parker in Road Trip (2000), his first lead in a hit comedy, and it is where his comic timing in an ensemble is easiest to see. What followed was less kind. The live-action Garfield film (2004) gave him Jon Arbuckle and a family franchise, and the notices were poor. The slacker parts of the 1990s had fixed him in place, and leading roles in films grew scarce.
Television and the recording booth were where he kept working. He voiced Joseph Gribble on King of the Hill from 2000 to 2010, across ten seasons of a show we rate highly, and since 2005 he has voiced many characters on Robot Chicken, where he also writes and produces alongside Seth Green. He led Franklin & Bash (2011–2014), created Men at Work (2012–2014), and appeared in The Fix (2019).
We should be honest about our own record. The two things of his we have reviewed, Clueless and King of the Hill, are among the best things he has been in, and in neither review did we find a reason to name him. That is the fate of a good supporting comic: the show is better for you and nobody writes it down. Still, we were fonder of Travis than the film needed us to be, and we can say why: he is the one boy in Cher's orbit who does not appear to be selling anything, and the film's satire depends on everyone else selling something.
He has been in independent films since the late 2010s, and it is possible one of them gives him a part that asks more than a shrug and a grin. Until then the truest picture of what he does is in the booth, where nobody can see the skateboard and nobody minds.
Biography
Breckin Meyer is an American actor, writer and podcaster. Born on 7 May 1974 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, he was raised in Los Angeles and attended Beverly Hills High School. He began his career in commercials after being introduced to an agent by Drew Barrymore, with whom he attended elementary school.
Meyer gained early notice for supporting roles in the films Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991), Clueless (1995) and The Craft (1996), and for regular parts in the sitcoms The Jackie Thomas Show (1992–1993) and The Home Court (1995–1996). His breakout came with the lead in the comedy Road Trip (2000). Subsequent film roles include Rat Race (2001), Garfield: The Movie (2004) and its sequel, Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005) and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009).
On television he has voiced Joseph Gribble in King of the Hill (2000–2010) and contributed to Robot Chicken (2005–), for which he has received Annie Awards and Primetime Emmy nominations. He created the sitcom Men at Work (2012–2014) and starred as Jared Franklin in Franklin & Bash (2011–2014).
