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Liam Aiken
Aiken at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival
Born	Liam Padraic Aiken January 7, 1990 (1990-01-07) (age 20) New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1997 — present

Liam Padraic Aiken (born January 7, 1990) is an American actor who has starred in a number of films, such as Stepmom and Good Boy!. He more recently starred as Klaus Baudelaire in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, based on the series of books.

Early life

Liam Aiken was born in New York City, the only child of Bill Aiken, an MTV producer, and an Irish immigrant mother, Moya Aiken. He attended Dwight Englewood School. He made his professional acting debut in a Ford Motor Company Windstar commercial. Aiken made his stage debut in the Broadway play A Doll's House at the age of seven and his film debut playing Parker Posey's son in Henry Fool in the same year. His mother encouraged him to begin acting because of his need for a college fund after his father's death in 1992 from cancer. When Aiken found that he enjoyed acting, he decided to continue.

Career

Aiken's first major film role was playing Susan Sarandon's young son in Stepmom in 1998, which also starred Julia Roberts and Jena Malone. He appeared as Tom Hanks' younger son in the 2002 film Road to Perdition. He starred in the family film about dogs from space, Good Boy! playing the lead, Owen Baker, in 2003. He turned down the role of Cole Sear in The Sixth Sense (1999) because his mother felt he was too young for the death-fixated role; the role went instead to Haley Joel Osment. Aiken was also considered for the role of Harry Potter, as he had previously worked with director Chris Columbus on Stepmom.¹ However, as he was not British,² Daniel Radcliffe took the part. Aiken then went on to play the intelligent, 12-year-old orphan, Klaus Baudelaire in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events in 2004. In March 2009, Aiken was cast as Johnnie Pappas, in Michael Winterbottom's remake of The Killer Inside Me, starring Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson.

In the fall of 2008, Aiken entered New York University as an undergraduate studying film and television.³

Filmography

References

External links

• Liam Aiken at the Internet Movie Database
• Liam Aiken at Allmovie