Zegers is active in sports, especially basketball, ice hockey, and golf.[7][8] He played on the Hollywood Knights celebrity basketball team, raising money for local Los Angeles schools.[9]
Career
Early work
Zegers began his performing career at the age of six, appearing in about 30 TV commercials.[5] His first film role was at the age of seven, in a small part in the Michael J. Fox comedy Life with Mikey (1993), playing a younger version of Fox's character.[1] Subsequently, he made a guest appearance on the acclaimed science fiction series The X-Files, playing a stigmatic child, Kevin Kryder, in the 1995 episode "Revelations," and had a recurring role on the Canadian TV series Traders (1996).[10][11] During this time, he appeared in several made-for-television films, including Thicker Than Blood: The Larry McLinden Story, The Silence of Adultery, and Rose Hill, and as Noah Thompson in the "Let's Get Invisible!" episode of Goosebumps.[12]
His career received a major boost when he won the role of Josh Framm in Air Bud (1997), a film about a lonely boy who befriends a basketball-playing dog. Air Bud launched a franchise, with four sequels. Zegers appeared in four of the films, as well as a similar title, MVP: Most Valuable Primate (2000), which featured a hockey-playing chimp.[13]
Around that time, he starred in other family-friendly fare, including A Call To Remember (1997) with Joe Mantegna,[14]Nico the Unicorn (1998) with Elisha Cuthbert, Treasure Island (1999) with Jack Palance, and Time Share (2000) with Nastassja Kinski.[15] He also played a boy who discovers he is a clone in the TV series So Weird (1999).[16] While also headlining numerous family/animal films, between 1997 and 2004, Zegers had starring or costarring roles in many low-budget horror films, often Canadian, including Shadow Builder, Komodo (1999), Wrong Turn (2003), and Fear of the Dark and The Hollow (both 2004).[17]
In Four Days (1999), Zegers played a nameless boy devoted to his bank-robber father. He also appeared in the short-lived American television series Titans (2000), opposite Yasmine Bleeth, for which he was chosen by producer Aaron Spelling. It was his first regular television series role. Zegers had previously worked with Bleeth in the 1999 film It Came from the Sky, where he played a mentally disabled child visited by an angel-like couple.[18] He co-starred with Harry Hamlin in Sex, Lies & Obsession (2001), a Lifetime Network film about sex addiction, and with Gena Rowlands and James Caan in The Incredible Mrs. Ritchie (2003), a television film drama that won three Daytime Emmy awards: Outstanding Children/Youth/Family Special, Outstanding Performer (Rowlands), and Outstanding Writing.[19]
In the summer of 2003, he filmed the drama Some Things That Stay at the same time as the remake of Dawn of the Dead, shuttling across Canada between sets. Around this time, he also continued his television work, appearing on Smallville in 2003 and House in 2004.
2005–present
In 2005, he had a major role in the Academy Award-nominated independent film Transamerica, co-starring Felicity Huffman. Zegers' performance as Toby Osbourne, the street-hustling bisexual son of a trans woman (Huffman) was praised by several critics, and he won the Trophée Chopard for Male Revelation at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.[20] Director Duncan Tucker said he had to overcome his initial wariness over Zegers' good looks before casting him for the role.[21]Variety's reviewer wrote that "Zegers... finds multiple dimensions in pic's potentially most clichéd character...,"[22] and The Hollywood Reporter's critic said, "As a boy who considers sex his chief talent, Zegers... conveys Toby's essential sweetness and hunger for real affection, making him much more than just a vain or damaged kid."[23]
Also in 2005, he appeared with Shailene Woodley in Felicity: An American Girl Adventure, a television film set in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1775, based on the American Girl book series.[24] He played 15-year-old Benjamin "Ben" Davidson, an apprentice at a shop owned by Felicity's father.[25] In 2006, Zegers played supervillain Concussion in the comedy Zoom, with Tim Allen, and had the lead role opposite Samaire Armstrong in the romantic comedy It's a Boy Girl Thing.[26] He guest-starred as Damien Dalgaard in Gossip Girl from 2009 until 2010, and returned again in late 2010 for multiple episodes throughout season 4. He appeared in Rock Mafia's 2010 music video "The Big Bang", and in 2012, played the male protagonist in the television series Titanic: Blood and Steel.[27][28][29]
