Nicholas Brendon is an American actor and writer. He was born three minutes after his identical twin brother, actor Kelly Donovan on April 12, 1971 in Los Angeles, California. He attended Chatsworth High School, where he was also a starter on the baseball team. He had dreams of playing for the L.A. Dodgers, but had to pursue other options when he hurt his arm about a year after graduating high school.
He got his big break as an actor when he landed the role of Xander Harris on the hugely successful TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003). The series ran from 1997 until 2003, garnering a huge cult following as well as a large fan base for Brendon. Brendon and brother Kelly appeared together in the episode “The Replacement”, in which Xander has to cope with having a seemingly sinister double. His first major role in a feature film came with the Charles Busch satire Psycho Beach Party (2000). Brendon has also starred in the ABC Family Channel original movie Celeste in the City (2004). The following year, he returned to Fox as part of the cast of Kitchen Confidential, based on the book by chef Anthony Bourdain. In 2006, he voiced Huntsboy #89 for season 2 of the animated series American Dragon: Jake Long. That same year, he reunited with his former Buffy the Vampire Slayer co-star Charisma Carpenter in the ABC Family TV movie Relative Chaos.
From July 26 through August 30, 2006, Brendon co-starred with Noah Wyle in the play ‘Lobster Alice’ at the Blank Theatre Company in Los Angeles. He subsequently appeared in the Blank Theatre’s annual Young Playwrights Festival and its productions of The SantaLand Diaries (Nov 20-Dec 2009) and ‘Why Torture is Wrong’, and ‘The People Who Love Them’.
In 2007, Brendon began appearing on the popular TV series Criminal Minds in the recurring role of FBI technical analyst Kevin Lynch. He appeared in episodes in each season through the tenth season. In September 2010, he premiered his web comic ‘Very Bad Koalas’, co-created with animation director/producer Steve Loter. The comic follows the journey of two sheltered and innocent koalas experiencing a variety of people and places while on the run from the law in a 1958 Cadillac Eldorado. In October 2010, Brendon began a four-episode arc on ABC’s Private Practice playing Lee McHenry, a mentally disturbed man who assaults Charlotte King.
In 2014, he played a pivotal role in Carter Covington’s MTV series Faking It as Jackson Lee, a mentor to Gregg Sulkin‘s character Liam Booker. That same year, Brendon was part of a summit for writers of the ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ comic books from Dark Horse which included Joss Whedon, Jane Espenson, Drew Greenberg, Andrew Chambliss and the then-incoming Buffy writer Christos Gage. He is credited with co-writing several issues of the show’s canonical comic book series.
Most recently, Brendon completed filming The Nanny, Redwood, and Dark/Web.