Lucas Cruikshank

"Hey everyone, it's Lucas!"

- Lucas's catchphrase

Lucas Alan Cruikshank (born August 29, 1993) is an American comedic actor. Living in Columbus, Nebraska, he created the character Fred Figglehorn, and the associated Fred series for his channel, on the video-sharing website YouTube. These videos are centered on Fred Figglehorn, a fictional 6-year-old who has a dysfunctional home life and "anger management issues".

Personal life
Cruikshank was raised in Columbus, Nebraska, and attended Lakeview High School. He is the son of Molly Jeanne (née Duffy) and Dave Alan Cruikshank. He is the middle of eight children (he has five sisters and two brothers). Cruikshank is openly gay. In a video released August 20, 2013, he came out saying "I'm gay. I feel so weird saying it on camera. But my family and friends have known for like three years. I just haven't felt the need to announce it on the Internet."

JKL
In June of 2006, Lucas's Mom, Molly Cruikshank, bought him an early 13th birthday present, a video camera. So the next time the three got together, they were able to do skits in front of a camera. So on June 11, 2006, the three opened up a Youtube account entitled JKL Productions (from the first letter of each one's name: Jon, Katie, & Lucas) & they uploaded their first video, "Hannah Montana", basically them doing self-choreographed dances while lip syncing to a live version of Hannah Montana's song, "The Best of Both Worlds".

Over the course of that month, they made & uploaded 15 videos (2 of them deleted in late 2008). But when Jon & Katie were away from Lucas, the 3 decided that Jon & Katie would make their own videos (ocassionly featuring neighbors & friends), & Lucas would make his own videos (occassionly featuring his 7 brothers & sisters). The 3 were still met up every once in a while, and every chance they could, they made videos. But the 3 really gained an audience a year later, on June 13, 2007, when they made a video of them dancing and lip-syncing to Hannah Montana's song "Nobody's Perfect". The video hit over 1,000,000 views in less than 2 months, & caught the attention of internet users everywhere. Now they were more famous than ever, being interviewed by Lucas's local paper & an Australian radio station, interviewing them via webcam.

As mentioned above, whenever Jon & Katie weren't with Lucas, they made their own seperate videos. Lucas liked to make vlogs of characters he made, such as "Jeffy Jeff" & "Richard, the GREAT". But on October 30, 2006, Lucas uploaded a video called "Fred on Halloween", about a kid named Fred that had anger issues and a really high pitched voice. This character grew very popular on Youtube, also being a reason for JKL Production's gain of subscribers. But on May 1, 2008, all of the Fred videos were deleted off of JKL Production's channel and into a new channel, Fred. The character Lucas had made was growing so popular he made his own channel for the character & uploaded videos of Fred weekly. And then, a couple of months later, all of Lucas's solo videos were deleted. It was official. Lucas had left JKL Productions, his last appearance being on April 19, 2008, on the video "100th VIDEO!" singing the number 100 over and over and over along with Jon & Katie.

Fred
Cruikshank, while testing character ideas, created the Fred character in a Halloween video, and uploaded it to a YouTube channel that he had started with his two cousins. Upon the success of Fred, he started a video series, and set up the Fred channel in April 2008. By April 2009, the channel had over one million subscribers, making it the first YouTube channel to do so, and the most subscribed channel at the time. In December 2009, Cruikshank filmed Fred: The Movie, which aired on Nickelodeon in September 2010. Nickelodeon has created a franchise surrounding the character and began producing the sequel in March 2011. Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred aired on October 22, 2011, also on Nickelodeon. In 2012 Fred: The Show aired, consisting of 20 11-minute episodes, as well as a third movie.

Sponsorship and appearances
In the Fred series, Cruikshank promotes various products and movies. He is seen using a Zipit, as well as his own products and T-shirts. In addition to promoting his own movies and albums, Cruikshank has also promoted the movies City of Ember, Year One, and Adventures of Power, and the artist Kev Blaze.

He has made a cameo appearance as both "Fred" and himself on Nickelodeon's iCarly in "iMeet Fred", which originally aired on February 16, 2009.

Cruikshank has appeared on The Tyra Banks Show, as well as the Hannah Montana episode "Come Fail Away", which aired December 6, 2009. He appeared at the 2009 Teen Choice Awards as well as the 2010 Kids' Choice Awards presenting awards to winners off-stage. In 2011, he appeared on the Cartoon Network Hall of Game Awards, and in an episode of Supah Ninjas. In 2012 and 2013 he starred as the lead in the Nickelodeon television show Marvin Marvin, as an alien "teenage" boy adjusting to human life.

Other work
Cruikshank was originally a part of JKL Productions, a group comprising twins Jon and Katie Smet and Lucas Cruikshank, their cousin. Although Cruikshank formally left the group, JKL prefers to keep Lucas' "L" in its name. Cruikshank deleted all of his individual videos when he left JKL Productions, but he can still be seen in a few of their videos. In January 2009 he set up his own channel, called "lucas", in which he appears as himself. Since May 2013, Cruikshank has regularly released vlogs on his "lucas" channel with friend, and fellow actor, Jennifer Veal.