Frederick Christopher "Chris" Klein was born on March 14, 1979 and was raised in Hinsdale, Illinois. His first stage performance was in a community theater at the Sheraton Convention Center in Chicago. His family soon moved to Omaha, Nebraska, where he began acting in high school. He participated in a production of West Side Story and was soon offered his first professional acting job by director Alexander Payne, who at the time was beginning to work on the film Election. Klein was soon chosen for the film and in 1999, the movie was released. While briefly studying theater at Texas Christian University, he worked on various films. His next major appearance was on American Pie, in which he played Chris "Oz" Ostreicher, a role he is best known for. His other film credits include Say It Isn't So, American Pie 2, Rollerball and We Were Soldiers. His later films include teen flicks Just Friends and American Dreamz.
In talking about his job as an actor, Klein said in an interview with About.com, "One of the things I love about acting is that I get to travel to all kinds of different spots. Though some of the locations might not be the most exotic, i.e. Regina in my particular opinion, but it's always when you end up making a movie like this, you end up having a special memory about that particular place, which I did."
Klein also said of the movie Just Friends in an interview with Web Wombat, "We had a lot of fun making this movie. Just really great characters too – Anna Faris really blew me away in this movie, and of course, Ryan’s fantastic. We had a lot of fun. The director Roger Kumble really let Ryan and I make a good run for it too – so we had a good time with each other."
(Photo courtesy of CBS)