Making a name for himself! Taylor Zakhar Perez has been in Hollywood for a while, but his breakout role came alongside Joey King in the 2020 movie The Kissing Booth 2 where he played the character Marco.
“Breakout stars … when it happens, you’re, like, ‘whoa.’ And so when you get a breakout in quarantine, it’s like, ‘All right, everything is just remote from the house, and you don’t really get to interact with people,'” the actor recalled to WWD in August 2021. “Everyone was, like, ‘Taylor, this is going to be great. This is going to be great for you,’ and then when it came, it was great. But then it just wasn’t the same, I think, as other people experienced, so it’s been very nontraditional.”
Despite his quiet (so to speak) rise to fame, Taylor has definitely made his mark on the film industry, nabbing roles in some major projects since the Netflix franchise came to an end. However, acting wasn’t always in the cards for the star. He grew up as a competitive swimmer while working at his family’s auto body shop, but eventually “detailed enough cars to know that I don’t enjoy it,” Taylor told GQ in June 2023.
“It killed my dad for a long time. I guess a lot of my choices may [have],” Taylor mused. “If I keep living for people in the past, I’m never going to grow and move forward.”
Grow and move forward he has, especially when it comes to getting cast in more mature roles. In 2022, he appeared in HBO’s Minx, something the complete opposite from his Kissing Booth roots.
“When [people] see a stereotypical dumb blonde or dumb jock, they go straight to [thinking] they don’t have emotion, they don’t understand the world, they’re unintelligent,” he told Entertainment Weekly of his role as Shane in the show. “I knew from the beginning that he wasn’t that. The biggest thing was grounding him, making him likable, and also playing against the line.”
He added, “It’s funny going from playing a 17-18 year old kid a few years ago and being in a different type of project. The show is very scandalous. I think it’s going to be exciting, fun, and just like a ‘wow’ moment.”
Scroll through our gallery to see Taylor’s past and upcoming roles.
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