Everything you need to know about Wilmer Valderrama and the state of his career can be found in the trivia section of his IMDB biography.
This section includes facts about the actor such as: “One of People Magazine’s ‘Top 50 Bachelors’ (2002),” “Was a guest at Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher’s wedding,” and “Favorite Love Song is ‘Take My Breath Away’ by Berlin from the film Top Gun.”
Valderrama is best known Fez on “That 70’s Show” from 1998 to 2006 and he was actually funny in it, if you are into the ethnically ambiguous, dumb foreign exchange student trope. The series was a major success for nearly a decade, and Valderrama wound up in tabloids for his dating and clubbing escapades. Since then, he hasn’t been in the news for either.
So: What ever happened to him?
“That 70’s Show” made the handsome young actor fairly popular, but not nearly in the same category as Ashton Kutcher or Mila Kunis. In Valderrama’s defense, it must kind of suck to always be a footnote of the series and behind Topher Grace so maybe that is what prompted his epic douchiness. (Proof of his douche behavior to come.)
After “That 70’s Show” ended in 2006, Valderrama appeared in several straight-to-DVD and made-for-TV movies (usually with pretty low billing) that you have definitely never heard of, including one with Val Kilmer, which is a truly hilarious pairing.
He made several guest appearances on network sitcoms like “Raising Hope” and the USA series “Blue Bloods,” a series that you or I could likely land a part on.
Over the past few years, Valderrama has appeared in several TV shows that have only lasted one season, including “Chadam” (never heard of it), “Are You There, Chelsea?” and most recently, “Awake.” This is not a good track record!
As far as scoring hot young starlets goes, Valderrama has been fairly successful. During the height of both his “70’s Show” fame and and the popularity of trucker hats in 2004, he bagged Lindsay Lohan who was 18 at the time, and was the first of his young(er) girlfriends. 2004 was also the last year that Lohan was famous for anything but being a train wreck. Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not.
Valderrama went on Howard Stern’s radio show in 2006 and spilled intimate details about his sex life with past girlfriends including Lohan, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Mandy Moore and Ashlee Simpson. What a cool guy! “My show is about to end and I’m about to become irrelevant. I think I’ll go on Howard Stern and tell the world what sex with Mandy Moore was like!” Hey, if you’re going to pull a John Mayer and divulge details about how actresses are in bed, they should probably be in a higher fame caliber than Ashlee Simpson.
Valderrama then (allegedly) started dating Disney Channel star Demi Lovato around 2010, when he was 30 and she was 17 (or the early side of 18 if you want to be generous) and are apparently still dating.
There is good news for Valderrama and his four fans, however. He now stars in “From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series,” Robert Rodriguez’ television adaptation of his 1996 horror/ Western that premieres March 11 on the El Rey network. Maybe Rodriguez should have checked out the longevity of Valderrama’s other TV series before casting him, but who are we to tell him what to do?
Hopefully this series works out for him. Valderrama recently unloaded two California properties — including a Hollywood bachelor pad that sold for $817,000 and another home in Encino that is on the market for $1.2 million — which screams DEBT. It turns out that gigs on one-season network dramas don’t pay very well.
This has been your first and last Wilmer Valderrama update.