HE stole hearts with his adorable portrayal of the young version of Jim Carrey’s Grinch in the iconic festive movie.
But just two years after the release of the Christmas classic, the rising star who overcame all the odds was dead aged 20.
It is 20 years since Joshua Ryan Evans, the highly-talented young actor, sadly passed away.
Born with achondroplasia, a form of dwarfism, he stood at just three feet two inches (97cm) tall.
He also had a congenital heart problem and had to undergo three operations before reaching his teenage years.
While recovering from his surgeries at hospital or home, he spent much of his time watching TV and movies.
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He later said that TV provided him with a total escape and took him away from his problems.
This inspired him to pursue acting as a profession.
“I thought, if it’s all pretend, why can’t I do that?” he told the LA Times in an interview in 2000.
From his home in Hayward, California, Evans printed his own business cards and, in 1994, aged just 12 contacted an agent without even speaking to his parents.
Evans soon booked his first acting gig and appeared in “The Dancing Baby” commercial for Dreyer’s/Edy’s Ice Cream.
The ad was a hit and won an industry award, setting Evans on his path to success.
He made a couple of appearances in the massively popular 90s sitcom Family Matters, playing the role of “Stevil”, a haunted ventriloquist’s dummy in two Halloween special episodes.
In 1998, he played pint-sized child prodigy lawyer Oren Koolie in two episodes of Ally McBeal, where his character confronted the main character.
Due to his condition, which gave him both the appearance and voice of a small child, he was cast to play the role of a toddler in 1999’s Baby Geniuses, his film debut.
Also in 1999, he appeared in the main role as “General Tom Thumb”, the dwarf circus performer, in the cable miniseries PT Barnum.
He was a truly unique talent with a remarkable spirit
NBC
Other smaller roles appeared that same year, including voice work on Nickelodeon’s animated TV series Hey Arnold.
The following year he was to play the role that shot him to stardom when he was cast as the young version of Jim Carrey‘s Grinch in the festive hit film How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
He said that he enjoyed the role, although parts of the job were daunting.
For instance, his daily make-up to become the “Young Grinch” took almost five and a half hours, two hours longer than that of star Jim Carrey.
But he got on well with the film’s director Ron Howard, who was also a former child star.
“It was wonderful,” Evans told an interviewer. “Every time I got to see Ron it was an honour.”
According to Howard, Evans’ role was originally planned as only a small walk-on part as a funny green class misfit, but he changed his mind as soon as he met the young star.
“Evans generated a lot of heart for the story,” he said.
His most famous role came the following year when he was cast as a living doll Timmy Lenox in the NBC soap opera Passions.
Evans’s role was the most popular and memorable character on the show, and he won a number of awards and nominations.
In 2000 and 2001, he won two consecutive Soap Opera Digest Awards, the first for “Favorite Scene Stealer” and the second as “Outstanding Male Scene Stealer”.
He was nominated for a Young Artist Award in 200, and a Daytime Emmy Award for “Outstanding Younger Actor” in 2001.
The same year, Evans won a Hollywood Reporters’ YoungStar Award for “Best Young Actor/performance in a Daytime TV Series”.
He was also given the “Vision Award” in 2001.
Evans was always upbeat about his condition and believed that his small stature had given him an advantage.
According to him, because of his size, roles were specifically written for him, whereas if he had been a regular teenager, he would have gone unrecognised.
“I love my life,” he told E! Online in 2000. “Acting is not only what I do, it’s what I am. I can’t imagine spending my life doing anything else.”
But sadly, in 2002, he died suddenly from complications related to his heart condition during a medical procedure in San Diego.
In a bizarre coincidence, on the day he died, NBC aired an episode of Passions where Evans’s character died after donating his heart.
The episode was taped weeks earlier, and his character was due to return later in the series as a “Presence”.
Those plans were scrapped, and instead, the episode was dedicated to Evans, with later episodes recut to remove scenes involving his character.
“We are deeply saddened by the sudden and tragic loss of Josh Ryan Evans,” NBC said at the time. “He was a truly unique talent with a remarkable spirit. He will be sorely missed by his Passions family and by all of us at NBC.”
His personal motto was “It is not the size of the dreamer, it’s the size of the dream,” and they were words that Evans lived by.
When signing autographs for his fans, he always wrote: “Dream Big.”