Leo Howard
Leo Howard is an actor, born 1997.
Leo Howard was a martial artist before he was anything else, and Hollywood cast him accordingly. As a child he played the young Snake Eyes in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and the young Conan in the 2011 Conan the Barbarian, which is a very specific niche: the kid who can convincingly throw a punch on camera. He won a Young Artist Award for playing Laser Short in Shorts in 2009.
Disney XD then gave him the lead. Kickin' It ran from 2011 with Howard as Jack Brewer, and it did the sensible thing of building the show around the one thing he could genuinely do. He also directed an episode in its fourth season at the age of sixteen, work for which Guinness World Records certified him as the youngest television director.
Getting out of child stardom has been the usual grind of guest arcs: Sven in Santa Clarita Diet, Tommy Harte in Why Women Kill, Ethan Machado in Legacies, Grover Jones in Freakish, plus stints on Lab Rats and Shake It Up. In 2023 he joined Days of Our Lives as Tate Black, which is the oldest and least fashionable route back into steady work, and one that has restarted plenty of careers. He also works as a director and a musician, so the acting may end up being the smaller part of the story.
Movies (5)
TV (7)
Where to start with Leo Howard
Nothing else on his list works as well as Kickin' It, so start there. It is a children's sitcom and knows exactly what it is, but the fight choreography is better than the genre has any reason to offer, because the lead could actually do it.
Why Women Kill is the best adult material he has been near, a series with a far sharper script than his usual work, and his part in it is small but well used. Shorts is the early one that won him an award and still plays as a properly anarchic kids' film. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and Conan the Barbarian are worth a look only as bookends, two blockbusters that hired a child to be the flashback version of a famous man. Legacies and Santa Clarita Diet are for completists.