All Top Hollywood Celebrities

He was born Matthew Mackendree Lanter on April 1, 1983, in Massillon, OH, to Joseph Lanter and Jana Burson. The family moved to Atlanta, GA when Matt was eight, and he came of age in suburban Gwinnett County, attending Collins Hill High School and becoming an avid athlete, playing golf, football and baseball. His parents divorced his senior year. Graduating high school in 2001, Lanter attended the University of Georgia, majoring in sports business, which dovetailed with his love of baseball into a two-year stint as a batboy for the Atlanta Braves. For a time he mulled over a career in professional sports management, but while still in school, he noticed an open call for attractive would-be models for a reality show. The scouts liked what they saw and he found himself on his way to Los Angeles to become one of several hunks being pared down each week on Bravo's "Manhunt: The Search for America's Most Gorgeous Male Model." He made it to the final 10, but the dog-eat-dog experience soured him on the prospect of modeling. When he got the axe, he responded on the air by suggesting he would rather be an actor anyway. Not improbably, a talent management executive soon called him up.
Matt Lanter raised distaff eyebrows nationwide with his smoldering good looks on one of Bravo's bevy of reality shows, "Manhunt" (2004), which in due course became a springboard to a prolific acting career. Lanter made his imprint on the sci-fi world with a role on NBC's hit drama "Heroes" (2007- ) and a coveted job as the voice of Anakin Skywalker on The Cartoon Network's "Star Wars" spin-off series, "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" (2008- ), before winning a slot as a series regular on The CW's teen soap revival, "90210" (2008- ). Deftly leveraging his all-American-boy aesthetic with the capacity to play darker shades of smarmy prom-king stereotype, Lanter developed buzz as a teen heartthrob and a hot commodity for producers looking for fresh-faced, chiseled-jawed beefcake.