"Do you know the human head weighs eight pounds?"
With lines like this, delivered in an adorable lisp and with refreshing ease, spike-haired cherub Jonathan Lipnicki endeared
himself to Tom Cruise's Jerry Maguire, and to movie goers everywhere.
As precocious as Shirley Temple and as impish as Macaulay Culkin, seven-year-old Lipnicki
has more going for him than multiple cowlicks and over sized eyeglasses (for
astigmatism).
"He's not a Hollywood kid," says Ross Brown, creator of the CBS
sitcom Meego, co-starring Bronson Pinchot and Lipnicki."Some of them are so over trained, it reeks of an adult talking. Jonathan
is a kid and he acts like a kid." As a four-year-old, though, he did tag
along to acting lessons with his older sister Alexis, now ten, who appears in TV
commercials.
Jonathan already loves the biz. "I want to act until I'm
old," he says. "Until I'm 100."
At home in suburban LA's San
Fernando Valley with mother Rhonda, who helps manage her children's careers, and
father Joe, a CPA, Jonathan is just another boy on his T-ball team. He does his
chores, clearing the table and putting his clothes in the laundry, cares for his
dog Edgar, a pit-bull mix, and attends Indian Guide meetings with his father. He has already earned a yellow belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Other
than acting, Jonathan's only ambition is to be a boxer. But he promises with a
bright smile, "I wont bite anyone's ear off."