page_title: Nicholas Brendon
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Nicholas Brendon / Career
caption_attribution_description: English actor Anthony Stewart Head and american actor Nicholas Brendon at the Oakland Super SlayerCon.
context_page_description: Nicholas Brendon Schultz is an American actor and writer. He is known for playing Xander Harris in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Kevin Lynch in Criminal Minds. He has also starred in films such as Psycho Beach Party and Coherence.
context_section_description: At the age of 25, Brendon decided to return to acting. He signed with a manager and obtained the role of Xander Harris on Buffy the Vampire Slayer three months later. He appeared in all but one of the 144 episodes in the series, and even shared the screen with his twin, Kelly Donovan, when his character was split in two in the fifth-season episode "The Replacement".
  After the series ended in 2003, Brendon joined the cast of the Fox television pilot The Pool at Maddy Breakers. The series was not picked up by the network. In 2004, he co-starred in his first ABC Family movie, Celeste in the City. The following year, he returned to Fox as part of the cast of Kitchen Confidential, based on the book by chef Anthony Bourdain. Thirteen episodes were made, but the series was canceled on December 9 of the same year after the fourth episode aired, due to low ratings.
  In 2006, he voiced Huntsboy #89 for season 2 of the animated series American Dragon: Jake Long. That same year, he reunited with his former Buffy the Vampire Slayer co-star Charisma Carpenter in the ABC Family TV movie Relative Chaos.
  From July 26 through August 30, 2006, Brendon co-starred with Noah Wyle in the play Lobster Alice at the Blank Theatre Company in Los Angeles. He subsequently appeared in the Blank Theatre's annual Young Playwrights Festival and its productions of The SantaLand Diaries (November 20 to December 20, 2009), and Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them.
  In 2007, Brendon began appearing on the TV series Criminal Minds in the recurring role of FBI technical analyst Kevin Lynch. He has appeared in episodes in each season since, through the tenth season.
  On September 29, 2010, he premiered his web comic Very Bad Koalas, co-created with animation director/producer Steve Loter. The comic follows the journey of two sheltered and innocent koalas experiencing a variety of people and places while on the run from the law in a 1958 Cadillac El Dorado.
  On October 28, 2010, Brendon began a four-episode arc on ABC's Private Practice playing Lee McHenry, a mentally disturbed man who assaults Charlotte King.
  In 2014, Brendon was part of a summit for writers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics, which included Joss Whedon, Jane Espenson, Drew Greenberg, Andrew Chambliss and the then-incoming Buffy writer Christos Gage. He is currently involved with the show's canonical comic book series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Ten, on stories centering on his character.
  It was announced on August 27, 2014, that Brendon will star in the new Untitled Web Series About a Space Traveler Who Can Also Travel Through Time feature film along with Sylvester McCoy, Robert Picardo, Mayim Bialik, Chase Masterson, Rosearik Rikki Simons, Travis Richey, Eric Loya, and Carrie Keranen.
caption: Brendon with Anthony Stewart Head at the 2004 Oakland Super SlayerCon
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