Zachery Ty Bryan’s Struggles After Home Improvement: Legal Troubles and Career Decline

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Zachery Ty Bryan is famous for his role as the oldest son on the popular 1990s sitcom, Home Improvement. He was only 17 when the show ended in 1999, and continued to act in movies and television for many years after.

It wasn’t easy for Bryan to adjust to life after starring in one of the most popular sitcoms of the 90s, especially since he became famous so young. He’s faced several legal problems in the last five years, but that’s only part of his story since leaving Home Improvement.

Troubles with the law first came to light after his divorce from his high school sweetheart, Carly Matros, in 2020. They shared four children and seemed to have a happy, stable family, at least publicly.

Zachery Ty Bryan isn’t the only former child star from the 90s to run into legal trouble, and sadly, he probably won’t be the last. Many fans of Home Improvement remember him as the energetic Brad Taylor, and it’s jarring to see those memories contrasted with recent tabloid photos of him.

Zachery Ty Bryan Continued To Act After Home Improvement Ended In 1999

The popular sitcom Home Improvement concluded in 1999 after eight seasons when Patricia Richardson, who played Jill Taylor, chose to leave due to unequal pay compared to her co-star, Tim Allen. The show had been a major part of 1990s television, so its ending left actor Zachery Ty Bryan feeling somewhat adrift.

Despite becoming well-known for playing Brad Taylor, he successfully avoided being limited to that type of role. This was partly because he’d already appeared in small roles on other TV shows and movies for the previous ten years. He went on to land regular parts on the teen drama Boston Public and the legal series Family Law.

I remember watching Bryan pop up in a bunch of TV shows throughout the 2000s – he was always a solid, dependable presence. But it was 2006’s The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift that really put him on the map. Honestly, that ended up being the peak of his movie career. Sadly, almost everything else he did after that just didn’t connect with audiences and underperformed at the box office.

Zachery Ty Bryan also appeared in the 2009 NBC miniseries Meteor, but the show was poorly received by critics despite a lot of initial hype. It turned out to be his last on-screen performance for over a decade.

Zachery Ty Bryan Retired From Acting In 2009 But Returned In 2022

Bryan stopped acting in 2009, but he remained active in the film industry as a producer. Through his production company, Vision Entertainment Group, he worked on several smaller projects, including the 2010 horror film Prowl and the 2012 psychological thriller The Grief Tourist. The Grief Tourist was the last significant film he produced.

I was really surprised and delighted to see him back on screen in 2022! After being away from acting for thirteen years, he took a supporting role in this fun superhero parody show called The Guardians of Justice. It’s a really clever series – only seven episodes – that mixes live-action with animation, and basically pokes fun at all those classic DC Comics heroes we know and love.

The show’s clever and critical take on Batman is especially noteworthy. The character Knight Hawk, played by Dallas Page, reimagines Bruce Wayne not as a hero, but as a tyrannical figure secretly building an army to overthrow the government. Zachary Ty Bryan plays a smaller role as an advisor to the president.

I was so excited to see Bryan back on screen, but he hasn’t been in anything else since. I’m really hoping his part in The Guardians of Justice isn’t just a one-time thing and that this is the start of him acting again regularly. It’s a bit worrying though, because of all the legal issues he’s dealing with, and I’m not sure how that will affect things.

Zachery Ty Bryan Went On To Have 8 Children

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When the second season of Shifting Gears aired in October 2025, fans noticed that Zachary Ty Bryan, a former star of Home Improvement, didn’t participate in a reunion with his former castmates. It appears he’s moved on from the show and has been focused on building his own family over the last ten years.

Bryan and his ex-wife, Carly Matros, had four children together. Since their divorce, he’s had four more children, including a second set of twins with his former fiancée, Johnnie Faye Cartwright, between 2022 and 2023.

The actor recently had another child with a third woman. He was previously arrested and charged with domestic violence in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina on January 2, 2025, following an alleged assault involving this woman. This incident is one of several domestic abuse accusations Zachery Ty Bryan has faced in the last five years.

Zachery Ty Bryan’s Legal Trouble Explained

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Bryan has been arrested five times since October 2020. Three of those arrests were related to domestic violence, and two were for driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol without a valid driver’s license. The first arrest occurred in 2020 when he was accused of strangling his girlfriend.

Bryan admitted to assaulting someone and received three years of probation, with a condition that he stay away from the victim, his longtime partner, Johnnie Faye Cartwright. He was arrested again for domestic assault in July 2023, and after pleading guilty, was sentenced to a week in jail and another three years of supervised probation, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

He was arrested for domestic violence for the third time in January 2025, accused of hitting and choking a woman whose identity hasn’t been released. The case is still awaiting a court date.

According to reports from Deadline, Zachery Ty Bryan was arrested for driving under the influence twice this year. He’s also been convicted of DUI at least three times in the past decade. Last year, a Los Angeles court ordered him to pay over $108,000 to an investor after his production company, Lost Lane, was found to have committed fraud, according to Radar.

After a series of legal issues and convictions, Zachary Ty Bryan’s reputation is severely damaged. It seems unlikely he’ll be able to return to acting at a prominent level anytime soon.

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2025-11-08 20:29