When “Home Improvement” ended its eight-year run in 1999, Taran Noah Smith was on the cusp of adulthood. “I had a wonderful time, but it’s something I did all my childhood life, and by the time I was 16 or 17, I just wanted to do other things,” he told HNGN. Unfortunately, some of the decisions he made after leaving the biz behind would result in years of unwanted tabloid attention for Smith and his family.
When Smith was 16, he attended the same party as 33-year-old chef Heidi Van Pelt, and the pair soon started dating. Smith’s parents were concerned about the couple’s age gap and Smith’s attempt to get emancipated at age 17 so he could gain early access to his $1.5 million trust fund. Smith even ran away from home and married Van Pelt in hopes that it would help his cause. As his parents fought his efforts in court, Smith lashed out at his mother, Candy Bennici. “My mother always used to tell me to look out for the sharks, people who were going to take my money,” he told People in 2001. “Turns out she was talking about herself.”
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When Smith turned 18, he and Van Pelt used his trust fund money to open Playfood, a Kansas City-based company that produced dairy food alternatives for vegans. But after around half a decade of marriage, Smith told the Marin Independent Journal, “I realized I had made a mistake.”
