Why Hollywood Forgot About Jeremy And Jason London

Slackers, malls, flannel: no two Hollywood brothers so thoroughly embodied the '90s aesthetic more than Jeremy and Jason London. Twins with piercing eyes and brown moptops, the Londons were ubiquitous throughout the decade, with Jason taking most of his work in feature films and younger twin Jeremy spending most of his career turning heads on TV. Some of their bigger projects included Jason's lead turn in the classic Dazed and Confused and Jeremy's long run as Griffin Holbrook on the TV show Party of Five. But after a certain point—by the end of the decade, really—the duo were harder to find on screens large or small. What happened? Turns out there are more than a few reasons why Hollywood decided to leave the Londons behind.

Jeremy London was involved in one of the odder recent celebrity criminal incidents in 2010, when he claimed he was kidnapped and forced to smoke drugs at gunpoint over an hours-long ordeal before finally being released. He spent months trying to convince the public that his outlandish story was true, but even friends and family had trouble believing him. After almost a year, Jeremy was vindicated—it turned out he really had, in a fashion, been kidnapped, held at gunpoint, and made to smoke substances such as crack cocaine. Still, you have to wonder how you'd find yourself in a situation like that—and the eagerness with which his family was willing to throw him under the bus was fairly troubling. Jeremy ended up seeking treatment for his admitted addictions in December of 2010, coming clean as a cast member during the fourth season of Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.

On the other end of the misbehavior spectrum, Jason's antics are a little harder to sympathize with. In one highly-publicized episode from 2013, he got himself into a full-on bar brawl in Phoenix, Arizona, eventually being hauled away by the cops. Indignant, drunk, and apparently in a weird mood, Jason then decided to defecate in his pants in the patrol car as it hauled him off to the local county jail. Unbelievable behavior, but you've got to see the mugshot.

It's hard to imagine that 2014 was either of the London brothers' favorite year. Not only did Jason separate from his wife following a guilty plea on his part of those disorderly conduct charges, Jeremy was arrested for domestic battery against his estranged wife, after which court papers were filed that listed the actor as a "transient"—homeless. He bounced back pretty quickly, though: not five months later, he married another woman and fathered a baby. Hey, maybe anger management really does work.

As chaotic and distracting as their private lives have seemed, there are more mundane reasons behind Jeremy and Jason London's career decline. They were products of the '90s, and the '90s are over. Not everyone's a style chameleon; some stars are so tied up in the trappings of a certain era that when those days pass, they have trouble remaining relevant. Jeremy and Jason's styles both were so embedded in their time, their hair, their clothes, and the movies and shows they starred in became irrevocably tied to their era. (The same thing sort of happened to Party of Five co-star Neve Campbell.) Some actors have been able to parlay their '90s icon status into roles steeped in postmodern irony, like James van der Beek playing "James Van der Beek" in Don't Trust the B—- in Apt. 23. It's not too late for Jeremy and Jason to mount a career resurgence, but it might require staying out of trouble for a little while before the roles start pouring in again. 'Til then, there's always Mallrats.