This teen heartthrob deemed as gay basically vanished after “Home Improvement” Well, after all these years he’s finally surfaced again, and users say he’s barely recognizable…

“I had to kind of go, ‘Oops! Time to be Randy’…’Oops! Time to be Simba,’” Thomas told People in 1994. “You have to prepare yourself to become this totally different person. I mean, we’re not lions, right?”

Jonathan Taylor Thomas during 1996 Nickelodeon Big Help at Santa Monica Pier in Santa Monica, California, United States. (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc)

“I can’t tell you how many shows I’ve done with full-blown migraine headaches,” he says of his exhaustion. “I’d been going nonstop since I was 8 years old…I wanted to go to school, to travel and have a bit of a break.”

Over the next few years, he had guest appearances on several shows, including, Ally McBeal, Smallville and 8 Simple Rules and loaned his voice to animated characters on The Wild Thornberrys and The Simpsons.

Before stepping away, he challenged himself with some edgier roles as a bisexual hustler in the indie film Speedway Junky (1999) and as a persecuted gay teen in Showtime’s Common Ground (2000).

Those roles, combined with maintaining his privacy, sparked rumors about his sexuality, which he gently denied while speaking with Jay Leno.