Khleo Thomas

We first met Khleo back in 2003. He was in one of our first Movies of the Month, Holes. That was about a bunch of kids in a weird detention center, forced to dig holes in the desert to find a secret treasure. Khleo even celebrated his bar mitzvah while making that movie!

In Holes, Khleo played a kid who had such low self-esteem, he called himself “Zero”! In a later movie, he played a kid named “Splooge.” In the newer movie Bob Funk, he plays a guy named “Cupcake.” So he keeps getting raises in the nickname department. I mean, would rather be a zero or a cupcake? Us, too!

Khleo's next movie is called Boogie Town, and its a cross between dance movies like Step Up 2 the Streets and How She Move on the one hand (foot?) and superhero/sci-fi movies on the other. "Boogie," in the 1970s, was a slang word meaning "dance as funky as you can!"

By now, Khelo is all grown up (waaay up… he’s over six feet tall!), and he’s been in some very grown-up projects. Even before Holes, he was in Family Law, and since then he’s been in hit dramas including House MD, CSI, and ER. But he can also do comedy; he was in The Bernie Mac Show.

Khleo is continuing to do movies, too. He’s in Hurricane Season, which was made before hurricanes Gustav and Ike. This one is about kids who all end up in the same school after Hurricane Katrina, and form a winning basketball team.

He was also in The Beautiful Ordinary with Aaron Himelstein, about being in high school on the last date of the old millennium… Roll Bounce, about a kind of dancing they used to do on roller skates called “roller disco”… and Walking Tall, a remake about a tough cop who cleans up his small town.

OK, you are probably wondering about his name. “Khleo” is his own invention. His full name is Khaleed Leon. So he took the “Kh” from his first name and the “leo” from his second one: Kh+leo=Khleo. He says it just like “Cleo.” His brothers are Khadeem and Khameel, and his sister is Khaleea.

Khleo was born in Alaska, and his mom is from Morocco. See, there really are Jews everywhere! Why was he in Alaska? His dad was in the Army, and that’s where he was stationed. He lives in LA now.

He got his start in acting by seeing a kid in a commercial. He was only 4! His first TV shot was on a show called Kids Say the Darndest Things, a Bill Cosby Show that was a remake of a bit from a 1950s show.

Lately, Khleo has shown an interest in music, thanks to his long-time friendship with hip-hopper Bow Wow. (He was also a kid star, and used to go by Lil’ Bow Wow, as he was discovered by-- take a guess-- Snoop Dogg!)

Bonus:

Khleo’s favorite ice cream flavor is Ben & Jerry's Chunk Monkey, which is banana flavor with chocolate chunks.

But did you know that Ben & Jerry are Jewish? Yup! Their full names are Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield. They use a lot of their profits for good causes.

They are also known for naming their ice creams after their favorite musicians, like Willie Nelson, Jerry  Garcia, the Dave Matthews Band,  and the band Phish (two of whose band members are Jewish, too).

Other favors “honor” comic acts like Monty Python and Stephen Colbert, and even pop-culture characters like Dilbert and Napoleon Dynamite!

Bonus Bonus:

Ben and Jerry were not the first Jewish duo to create an ice cream empire. That would be Burt and Irv... but the world knows them by their last names: Baskin and Robbins! We grew up on their ice cream, and agree that it is truly "31-derful"! That was their slogan, since they started with 31 flavors.

The founders of the Haagen-Dasz ice-cream company were Jewish, too! And what does Haagen-Dasz mean? Nothing! They just thought the ice cream would sell better if it sounded like it came from ice-cold Scandinavia.