His paternal grandparents both did some acting when they were young. His 22-year-old brother Nate is a Yale graduate working in avant-garde theater in New York. Younger brother Zack, 19, is attending Pomona College, a half-hour away from Los Angeles, and still pondering his future.

He followed his father and grandfather to the University of Virginia, where he graduated in 2001 with a degree in economics and foreign relations.

He changed his name for screen-credit purposes because there's an actor named Ben Schenkman registered with the Screen Actors Guild.

Son of Austin attorney Pete Schenkkan and poet-writer Frances Schenkkan

Has a manager, publicist and lawyer on the payroll (he's shopping for a new agent now that his career is taking off)

He recently moved into a new apartment in Santa Monica and bought a sleek new Infiniti G35, which he concedes he spends more on than housing.

Moved to New York City three weeks before 9/11

While in New York he waited tables to help support himself and shared a bunk bed in a cramped apartment in the city.

Mother: Frances Schenkkan will begin the master's program in creative writing at the University of Texas in the fall. She's been a newspaper reporter and editor, and in the 1980s she served on the Austin Planning Commission and the board of the Austin Child Guidance Center. She is a recipient of the Adele Steiner Burleson prize in poetry at the university. She and husband Pieter have three sons, Ben, Nate, and Zack.

He graduated from the same high school in Austin that the Bush twins (Jenna and Barbara) graduated from. He was a senior the year they were freshmen.

Second cousin of Sarah Drew (she did a voice for "stacey" in "Daria" that mtv animated series and i the movie "Radio"with Cuba Gooding Jr. as "Mary Helen")