During the early 2000s, Khleo Thomas was one of the most popular child stars in the entertainment industry. He gained worldwide recognition for his role as Zero in the 2003 movie Holes. Khleo continued to land great roles throughout the mid-2000s, and it was clear that he had everything he needed to have a long-lasting career. However, by the end of the decade, we had started to see less and less of Khleo. When he did land roles, his parts were usually relatively small. At this point, it’s been a couple of years since he’s made an on-screen appearance. Naturally, lots of people have started to wonder what ever became of the former child star. Keep reading to find out what happened to Khleo Thomas.
Khleo’s Backstory
Khleo was born in Alaska but moved to Germany at a very early age. When he was around four years old, his family moved back to the United States and settled in California. Just a couple of years later, he started his acting career by doing commercials. He landed his first TV opportunity in a 1998 episode of Kids Say the Darndest Things. It didn’t take long for opportunities to start coming in and by 2002 he had landed a role in the movie Friday.
Not only was Khleo very talented, but he was a cute kid who had the ability to draw viewers in with ease. After the success of Holes, it appeared that Khleo was on track to become one of the hottest young actors of his generation. The role really catapulted his career to new heights and at first he was able to capitalize off of that. In 2005, he had a main role in the movie Roll Bounce and it looked like he was successfully navigating the transition from child star to young adult. However, that film would ultimately mark his last major role.
What Is Khleo Doing Now?
To be fair, it’s not unusual for people who find success as children to struggle with maintaining it later in life, so the fact that Khleo’s acting dwindled probably didn’t come as much of a surprise. One of the main reasons we don’t hear much about him anymore is because he hasn’t been involved in any kind of scandal. Overall, he seems to be very content with what he has going on now and he isn’t pressed to be back in the spotlight.
Music
Now that we’ve established that Khleo has stayed out of trouble over the years, we can say that the slow down in his acting career wasn’t for any of the typical reasons. Simply put, he is also interested in music and he decided that he wanted to put more focus on that. In fact, working with Bow Wow on role bounce was one of the things that inspired him to really start taking music seriously.
During an interview with Bustle, Khleo said,
“Music has always been a passion. You look at Holes and you look at the theme song “Dig It.” We wrote that song and we were all in the studio together — me and everyone else featured on that record — with Doug E. Fresh. I immediately got right to work on more music as soon as we were done filming. I went on my very own promo tour for that, and then after Roll Bounce, Bow Wow picks me up … He says, “Yo, I need you to come on this tour with me,” and I’m like, “Okay, you’re asking me to remove myself from the acting world to come play with you in your world?” But I couldn’t miss out on an opportunity like that…”
Shortly after the tour, he decided to start putting out music independently. His debut mixtape, The Next Episode, was released in 2011. He has released three other projects since then, but he hasn’t dropped any new music since 2014.
Gaming
Video games are something else that Khleo is interested in, and in recent years he has been putting a lot of attention on that. In 2019, he even got the chance to have a voice role in the game NBA 2K19. Khleo has started streaming his gameplay on Twitch and he’s built a pretty impressive following.
What’s Next For Khleo Thomas?
Gaming appears to be what he’s most focused on at the moment, but he hasn’t completely written music and acting off. There’s a good chance we could see him jump back into the entertainment industry at some point, and I think it’s safe to say that lots of people would love to see him on their screens again.music
Follow Us
