Name: Ben McKenzie
Date of Birth: 12 September 1978
Uncle is Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan
Education: Austin High, graduated 1997; University of Virginia, bachelor's degree 2001
His paternal grandparents both did some acting when they were young. His 22-year-old brother Nate is a Yale graduate working in avant-garde theater in New York. Younger brother Zack, 19, is attending Pomona College, a half-hour away from Los Angeles, and still pondering his future.
He followed his father and grandfather to the University of Virginia, where he graduated in 2001 with a degree in economics and foreign relations.
... He changed his name for screen-credit purposes because there's an actor named Ben Schenkman registered with the Screen Actors Guild.
Son of Austin attorney Pieter Schenkkan and poet-writer Mary Frances Victory.
Has a manager, publicist and lawyer on the payroll (he's shopping for a new agent now that his career is taking off)
He recently moved into a new apartment in Santa Monica and bought a sleek new Infiniti G35, which he concedes he spends more on than housing.
Moved to New York City three weeks before 9/11
While in New York he waited tables to help support himself and shared a bunk bed in a cramped apartment in the city.
Mother: Frances Schenkkan will begin the master's program in creative writing at the University of Texas in the fall. She's been a newspaper reporter and editor, and in the 1980s she served on the Austin Planning Commission and the board of the Austin Child Guidance Center. She is a recipient of the Adele Steiner Burleson prize in poetry at the university. She and husband Pieter have three sons, Ben, Nate, and Zack.
He graduated from the same high school in Austin that the Bush twins (Jenna and Barbara) graduated from. He was a senior the year they were freshmen.
Second cousin of Sarah Drew
Was a speaker at the Democratic National Convention on July 27, 2004.
Was voted one of InStyle's "10 Hottest Bachelors Of Summer" in July 2005, placing at number 10.
One of his grandfathers, Robert F. ("Bob") Schenkkan, was an early proponent of both PBS and NPR. In recognition of his work, Austin, Texas' public radio and television stations KUT-FM and KLRU-TV hosted a 90th birthday celebration for him in March 2007, at which McKenzie and many of Schenkkan's other grandchildren spoke.
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