A willingness to take less attractive roles has earned blond, athletic Seann William Scott strong character parts like the misguided bully or the sympathetic class clown in lieu of the romantic lead, setting him apart from the pack of young heartthrobs. The Minnesota native moved to Los Angeles following his high school graduation and after a talent search ended with a failed audition for the ABC soap "All My Children", Scott landed a guest stint on The WB's sitcom "Unhappily Ever After" in 1997. That same year he made his TV-movie debut with a supporting role in the NBC fact-based drama "Born Into Exile" and was featured the following year in an episode of the ABC sitcom "Something So Right.”
Although he was in his twenties, Scott possessed youthful looks that allowed him to be cast convincingly in teen roles, a definite asset to the up and comer while the industry was in the midst of a millennial teen film boom. In 1999, Scott made his big screen debut with a breakthrough role in the popular teen sex comedy "American Pie". He played Stifler, a crass, loutish senior whose luck with the ladies and constant taunting of his less fortunate peers leads the group to resolve to lose their virginity before graduation. He excelled as the bad guy, playing the despicable part with aplomb, skillfully handling his character's overconfidence and the appropriately graceless ways he reacted to his comeuppance. The next year Scott returned to the big screen with an engaging portrayal of class clown Billy Hitchcock in the high school-set thriller "Final Destination". Narrowly escaping a plane crash, Hitchcock and his fellow survivors find that death isn't accepting this change of plans without a fight, and the actor brought a much-needed comic relief to the harrowing events. Here Scott proved a charming screen presence, with a sweetly awkward role much more likable than his "American Pie" character.
He followed up that same year with a co-starring turn as one of a group of college guys from Ithaca, New York who accompany a friend (Breckin Meyer) on a "Road Trip" (2000) to Texas in an attempt to retrieve an explicit and incriminating videotape before it falls into the wrong hands, and he joined Ashton Kutcher as the central duo—sort of a handsome version of Beavis & Butthead or Cheech & Chong—in the comedy "Dude, Where's My Car" (2000), as unambitious as its heroes but consistently amusing enough to develop a cult following of admirers. On the strength of these subsequent performances, Scott reprised his role of Steve Stifler—this time in a much-expanded role—in the not-as-funny sequel "American Pie 2" (2001) and became one of the central characters in the third venture, "American Wedding" (2003), which chronicled the final maturation of Stifler. Again showing his game willingness to play the fool rather than take on typical leading man fare, Scott goofed his way through writer-director Kevin Smith's "Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back" (2001) and showed considerable leading man charm as an "Alfie"-esque scoundrel in producer Lawrence Bender's otherwise unimpressive indie "Stark Raving Mad” (2002).
In 2003, Scott tried on the mantle of action hero—albeit a Stifler-esque one—when he joined Chow Yun Fat in "Bulletproof Monk,” as the two comic odd-couples whose mission is to protect a powerful ancient scroll that holds the key to unlimited power; and the actor had a funny cameo as Peppers in the comedy hit "Old School" (2003). Scott's star power outside the "Pie" franchise was finally proven officially that same year when he co-starred opposite The Rock in the crowd-pleasing action-comedy-buddy flick "The Rundown" as the irritating—but innocent—quarry of the bounty hunter muscleman. Scott was teamed with Johnny Knoxville to play a modern day incarnation of Bo and Luke Duke in the dumb but occasionally amusing big screen version of "The Dukes of Hazzard" (2005), though both actors were overshadowed by the hype surrounding the acting debut of Jessica Simpson. He next gave voice to Crash, a cocky, loudmouthed possum in “Ice Age: The Meltdown” (2006), the wildly successful sequel to “Ice Age” (2002) that that reunited Sid the sloth (John Leguizamo), Manny the wooly mammoth (Ray Romano), Diego the saber-toothed tiger (Denis Leary) and Scrat the prehistoric squirrel (Chris Wedge) in a quest to find Manny a mate despite possibly being the last mammoth in their rapidly melting world.
In summer 2005, Scott filmed “Mr. Woodcock” (release tentatively in 2007), a post-high school comedy about the best-selling author of a self-help book about letting go of the past returning to his home town where he learns that his widowed mother (Susan Sarandon) is engaged to marry Mr. Woodcock (Billy Bob Thornton), the gym teacher whose sadistic exploits where the bane of his adolescent existence. Along with his nerdy old friend (Kurt Fuller), he tries to stop the pending nuptials, only to have his plans go awry. Later that year, Scott worked on “Southland Tales," a futuristic musical-thriller set in Los Angeles in 2008 during a three-day heat wave in which an action star stricken with amnesia crosses paths with an adult film star developing a reality series and a Hermosa Beach police officer who holds the key to a vast conspiracy.