Scott Caan was born on August 23, 1976, in Los Angeles, California, a son to James Caan and his wife, Sheila Ryan, whom he divorced when Scott was just a year old. He started out in the entertainment business when he was a teenager as a roadie for bands Cypress Hills and House of Pain. Later he became a member of the hip hop band The Whooliganz with The Alchemist, after which he enrolled in L.A.’s Playhouse West, a training school for actors, writers, and directors that was founded in 1981 by Robert Carnegie and Jeff Goldblum.

Caan’s training there led to the beginning of his acting career in the late 1990s. He enjoyed supporting roles and starring roles in a number of independent films as well as in several high-profile films including 1998’s Enemy of the State, starring Will Smith, Gene Hackman, Jon Voight, and Regina King; and 1999’s critically acclaimed Varsity Blues, in which he starred alongside James Van Der Beek, Amy Smart, Jon Voight again, and Paul Walker, and took more of a lead role as a Texas football player, even stripping down to bare it all.

In 2000, Caan was featured in the movies Gone in Sixty Seconds, with Nicolas Cage, Angelina Jolie, and Giovanni Ribisi; and in Ready to Rumble, with David Arquette and Oliver Platt. The following year, Caan landed roles in American Outlaws, opposite Colin Farrell; and in the hit comedic crime caper Ocean’s Eleven, starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Julia Roberts, and Andy Garcia, among many others. Caan went on to reprise his Ocean’s role as Turk Malloy in the not-as-successful sequel Ocean’s Twelve in 2004, and the latest installment, Ocean’s Thirteen, which recently premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in France.

Caan made his directorial debut in 2003 with the film Dallas 362, in which he himself starred as Dallas. Other actors in the film, which won an award at the Las Vegas Film Festival that year, include Jeff Goldblum, Shawn Hatosy, and Kelly Lynch. In 2005, Caan paired up again with Paul Walker in the film Into the Blue, in which Jessica Alba also starred. A year later, Caan appeared as Mike in Friends with Money, a film starring Jennifer Aniston, Joan Cusack, Frances McDormand, and Catherine Keener.

YUDDY