They say you should never meet your heroes, but we are here to tell you that you can definitely connect with your childhood crush without fear of disappointment.
When Lizzie McGuire premiered on the Disney Channel in 2001, Hilary Duff's titular character wasn't the only middle schooler to be nursing a serious crush on Ethan Craft. Viewers fell every bit as hard for her adorably dim classmate. Sure her BFF Gordo (Adam Lamberg) had the brains, but Ethan had the personality of a puppy, that cool guy charisma and, you know, that mane.
And after an hour-long Zoom hang with Clayton Snyder, we are thrilled to report that that the actor behind Ethan is even more delightful than the character he played in Lizzie McGuire's two seasons plus the 2003 movie. Oh, and his hair is just as enviable more than two decades later. A humble Disney Channel hunk who is more than happy to indulge our insatiable need for nostalgia? Hey now, hey now, this is definitely what any millennial's dreams are made of.
"It's not necessarily new," Snyder told E! News of being asked about his time on Lizzie McGuire over the years. "I do know it's something that had a very positive impact on most people who bring it up and it's something that I am very grateful for the experience of doing." Which is why he's more than happy to take a few trips down memory lane. As he put it, "It's kind of a way of paying it forward to all the people who enjoyed it so much that made it as successful as it was, if that makes sense."
Just 13 years old and attending public school in Orange County, Calif. when the series began, Snyder admitted it was a very interesting social experiment, balancing homework and water polo practice with being on Disney's most-watched show. His TV commitments extended beyond filming days, he added, of "getting invited to things, other celebrity's birthday parties being like, 'I have no business being here but, like, I am on the cast of this show that is doing well, so it looks good. Let's take a photo together, great!'"
While some of his classmates "really wanted to be my friend and some people wanted to put me down in any way that they could," the now-34-year-old credited his teammates for keeping him grounded.
"I would show up to water polo practice and the guys would call me Lizzie," he admitted with a laugh. "So when you hop into a pool wearing a speedo and guys call you Lizzie, you're humbled and you are ready to show up and do the work."
Not that Snyder's two worlds didn't occasionally collide, like the time his mom had "the sweet idea" for him to bring Duff to a school dance. But, before you begin swooning over Lizzie and Ethan's IRL-date, "It turned into completely what you would expect from a middle school dance. It was at a gymnasium where it was just hot and sweaty and there were just giant circles around Hilary, watching her, like, two-stepping and just trying to be as normal as possible," Snyder recalled. "Like, the brave bad boy coming in every once in a while to see if they could get in there. I was like, 'Oh boy, this is tough to watch.' I'd be curious what her memory of that is!"
When he first auditioned for the show, Snyder didn't imagine appearing in more than one episode, let alone that it would define his acting career. And it was an innocent mistake he made during the audition that landed him the role of Ethan, who was initially supposed to be a bully: He pronounced Gordon as Gor-Don.
"In my mind, that's how you pronounce it, so at the time, I put a little flair on it and I went into the audition saying, 'What's up Gor-Don?!'" Snyder explained. "And they liked that. They thought it was very funny. I don't know how many other kids did that and that's a very interesting example of having a choice when you are playing a character that frankly wasn't much of a choice. It was just how I read the thing, which in and of itself kind of speaks to who I was."
While producers were initially unsure if the character would even make it into the final script, Ethan made his debut in episode two, "Picture Day," Snyder explaining, "After that, they were like, 'This guy is kind of fun and we'll bring him back for one more,' and then it turned into a recurring role."
Eventually, Ethan evolved into the show's heartthrob, a transition Snyder did not see coming.
"Well, I noticed that the other love interest was gone first," he said with a laugh about the abrupt disappearance of Danny Kessler (played by Byron Fox). "I was like, 'Wait, where did he go? He's not here anymore. We used to hang out!' I don't know the reason for all of that, but I did notice a shift and I went from being dumb and mean to dumb and very friendly, which was kind of just lovable puppy dog guy who was just very fun to play."
Snyder also had a good time just hanging out on-set with his co-stars, mostly bonding in their mandatory school sessions, during lunch hour or while playing video games with Jake Thomas and Lamberg in the latter's trailer. But, by the end of Lizzie's 65-episode run, Snyder was ready to return to his normal life, having already given up playing basketball and participating in his school's band due to his filming schedule.
"Frankly, when the show wrapped up, I was kind of thankful," he admitted. "I was like, ‘Okay, phew, going into high school, new chapter, that's done. We're going to see what this is going to be like.' And that's when they were like, 'Hey, do you want to do a movie?'"
Despite just making it onto the varsity water polo team as a freshman, the chance to spend a month in Italy filming The Lizzie McGuire proved too tempting of an offer to turn down. So, off Snyder went to make his big screen debut. Though it turned out to be anything but la dolce vita.
"It was that decision, actually, that got me to stop acting completely after the movie," he explained. "I was pretty down at that time. I really felt like I desired to be a team player in the things that I do. And I was able to enact that in The Lizzie McGuire Movie, but for some reason, not being there for my water polo team weighed very heavily on my part. And so after the movie, it was like, 'Okay, this is it, this is what I am doing.'"
While the filming aspect of the trip provided clarity for Snyder about what he wanted for his immediate future, it also gave his family a unique opportunity to connect with their Italian relatives for the first time, a formative experience the teen despite the language barrier.
"Before I left, [my family members] were like, 'Clayton, you have to learn Italian and come back,'" Snyder said. "So then I studied Italian in college and then I played water polo professionally in Italy my first year out of college and got fairly fluent. I was able to return now five or six times to see them over there, that was a reconnecting point of our families that we still enjoy to this day."
Aside from being the place where he learned how to speak Italian, attending California's Pepperdine University is also where Snyder met his wife, actress Allegra Edwards, introduced by a mutual friend in 2006. For him, the connection was immediate, he recalled: "It was very quickly, like, this person is very smart, very funny, very beautiful, and let's hang out at the time."
Though she didn't let on at the time, Snyder later learned that Edwards definitely knew who he was when they first met.
"We never talked about it. I wasn't like, 'So are you a fan? So do you know who I am?'" he explained with a laugh. "Didn't get there, she played it super cool at the time. At least I perceived it that way, and it came up way later, like, yeah, she definitely knew of the show and of Ethan Craft."
The couple tied the knot in 2020 and announced in January that they are expecting their first child.
"We're feeling great, we're feeling fantastic," Snyder said. "Thanks to God, everything is going well, the baby is healthy and we found out that it's a boy. And I dream of fatherhood and we're both just very, very excited and as prepared and equipped as we're going to be. We're thankful for a lot of support from both from family and friends and are in a very good position."
While fatherhood is in Snyder's immediate future, a Lizzie McGuire revival unfortunately isn't. At least for the time being, after Disney+ canceled its plans for the reboot, which had already filmed several episodes, in December 2019.
Snyder had yet to officially sign on to return as Ethan, but confirmed that "there were discussions. I reconnected with Hilary, like, 'Yeah, let's talk about what that might look like.' [But] in terms of plots or getting a script in hand, I was just, like, right before all that was unveiling, so the world may never know, including me."
In November 2019, Duff revealed to E! News that she pretty sure there was going to be "a thing" between Lizzie and Ethan, despite her kiss with Gordo in the movie. But Snyder was conflicted over who would be the best match for adult Lizzie.
"I think she needs somebody who is a little more intellectually stimulating that way, like a Gordo, however, I think sometimes she can overcomplicate things and that's one of Ethan's strengths," he explained. "He sees everything going on, but its just much more simple to him, so he can deflate something that could seem chaotic or complicated. Maybe that would really complement her in that situation. In the same way that she is more forward-thinking or aware, she can complement him in that way. So it's not always about are they similar enough. It's do they fit each other in that way? So actually, maybe there is something there."
Regardless of his romantic situation, Snyder is most curious about what Ethan would be up to today, though he does have some ideas.
"My wife and I like to imagine that he's a used car salesman and is just so good and just loves what he does and he does it well and honestly," he said. "Of course, he could have gone into politics and just be kind of a puppet figure there, too. There's a lot of directions you could go, but I like the idea of a mechanic, where people love to be around him because of his charisma and the way that he makes people feel, but he also wants to help people at the same time. He did like motocross and stuff like that, so being a mechanic maybe isn't that far off."
While Ethan's professional future is up in the air, Snyder's isn't, having established a successful career as a real estate agent in Los Angeles. Though his past as a child star does occasionally come up and he doesn't "shy away" from it, Snyder also doesn't "lean" into it.
"I would really like it to be you want to work with me because I'm really good at what I do and if it's a nice piece of trivia that I'm 'that guy' then that's wonderful," he said. "We've had plenty of clients of where halfway through showing them homes they're like, 'My wife and I just found out who you are and we can't believe it!' But that makes me feel good because I know that's not why they're working with me."
To him, Snyder continued, "it's the best of both worlds, where they have the fun of realizing that but their actual entry point was because of the work that we do." Dare we say it's what dreams are made of?
Lizzie McGuire is streaming on Disney+.