Freddie Prinze Jr. has been retired from acting for the past 14 years. Not retired, retired, exactly, but sort of. “I was always like, ‘If you’re going to retire, why do you need a press release?’ Just leave. Just stop,” the actor explains over Zoom from his gaming room in California. So he did. In reality, Prinze Jr. always had one goal in life: To be a good father. It was always top of mind for him, he says, considering his own dad, actor and stand-up comic Freddie Prinze, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound just a few months after Prinze Jr. was born. He was lovingly raised by his “crazy” mother, Kathy, a woman who cared for her son so much that she threatened one of his teachers with a .357 in her purse when the educator planned to paddle the youngster during school, and “a bunch of sociopaths”—family friends that he refers to as his “uncles,” including his godfather Bob Wall, Chuck Norris, Gene LeBell, and Ron De Blasio. Everything he learned—from defending himself from bullies to controlling his emotions—came from them. Talking about the group is bittersweet: “All the men that helped raise me have died in the last year, which is just brutal,” he says, sighing. But he credits them, particularly Wall, for shaping him into the man he is today. That, for him, comes back to being a great dad, which is exactly what he’s been doing for the last several years, aside from some… Click below to read the full story from Esquire
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