Who is Kirk Cameron?
American actor, author, preacher, television host, documentarian, and producer Kirk Cameron was born on October 12, 1970. As a teenager, he first became well-known for his portrayal as Mike Seaver on the ABC sitcom Growing Pains (1985–1992), for which he received two Golden Globe nominations.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Cameron appeared in a number of other TV shows and motion pictures, such as Listen to Me (1989) and Like Father Like Son (1987). He played Caleb Holt in the drama film Fireproof (2008) and Cameron “Buck” Williams in the Left Behind movie series in the 2000s.
Within a month of its theatrical debut, his 2014 picture Saving Christmas was criticized by critics and placed on the IMDb Bottom 100 List; some critics even called it one of the worst films ever created. Since then, he has produced movies, such as the financially successful Lifemark (2022). He wrote the faith-based children’s book As You Grow in 2022, and the following year, while on a well-attended book tour around the country, he read it at libraries.
Cameron is an evangelical Christian who co-founded The Firefly Foundation with his wife, actress Chelsea Noble, and collaborates with Ray Comfort in the evangelistic ministry The Way of the Master.
Kirk Cameron Early Life
Kirk Cameron was born in the Los Angeles community of Panorama City, which is located in the San Fernando Valley. Born to Barbara (née Bausmith) and Robert Cameron, a retired educator, he is the eldest of four children. Bridgette, Melissa, and Candace, a fellow actor who played D.J. Tanner on the comedy Full House, are his three sisters. Rather than attending a public or private school with lots of other pupils, Cameron went to school on the set of Growing Pains. But during filming breaks, he attended some studies at Chatsworth High School, where he graduated with honors in the 1988 class. In his early teens, Cameron was an atheist. He became a born-again Christian at the age of 18, at the height of his Growing Pains success.
Kirk Cameron Career
1980s–1990s
At nine years old, Kirk Cameronmade his acting debut in a morning cereal commercial. At the age of 13, he starred in his first television series, Two Marriages. He made appearances in a number of TV series and movies at this age. After being chosen to play Mike Seaver in the ABC sitcom Growing Pains, he rose to fame in 1985. Chelsea Noble, Cameron’s future wife, played Kate MacDonald, Mike’s prospective girlfriend in the series. After receiving two Golden Globe nominations for his performance, Cameron rose to fame as a teen idol in the late 1980s and was featured on the pages of numerous teen publications, such as Teen Beat, Tiger Beat, 16 and others.
He was earning $50,000 a week at the time. During Super Bowl XXIV, he also appeared in a 60-second Pepsi commercial. The 1988 Full House episode “Just One of the Guys” featured Cameron as a guest star, portraying D.J. Tanner’s cousin Steve, who was played by Cameron’s sister Candace.
Kirk Cameron went on to star in a number of movies, including the successful body-switch comedy Like Father Like Son (1987) with Dudley Moore. 1989’s Listen to Me, his subsequent theatrical release, did not do well at the box office. Cameron starred in The WB sitcom Kirk after Growing Pains concluded in 1992. The show debuted in 1995 and ran for two years. Cameron portrayed Kirk Hartman, a twenty-four-year-old who must take care of his siblings. Noble and Cameron collaborated on Kirk as well.
Around 1990, Cameron and his spouse, Noble, established The Firefly Foundation, which operates Camp Firefly, a summer camp that provides a complimentary week-long getaway to children with terminal illnesses and their families.
2000s
Although he starred in two television reunion films, Growing Pains: Return of the Seavers (2004) and The Growing Pains Movie (2000), ten years after the conclusion of Growing Pains, Cameron largely left mainstream film and television. When the entire first season of Growing Pains was released on DVD by Warner Bros. on February 7, 2006, Cameron joined the actors of the show again for an interview on CNN’s Larry King Live. In addition, Cameron has frequently acted in Christian-themed productions, such as the post-Rapture movies Left Behind: The Movie, Left Behind II: Tribulation Force, and Left Behind: World at War, in which he portrays Cameron “Buck” Williams.
Noble, Cameron’s wife, played Hattie Durham in the movie series. Cameron has starred in a number of movies, including The Miracle of the Cards, and has collaborated with Cloud Ten Pictures, a production firm that specializes in Christian-themed movies. Additionally, he starred in the Sherwood Pictures-produced drama picture Fireproof (2008). Cameron played the role of Captain Caleb Holt in the movie, which had a $500,000 budget. Despite having a modest budget, the movie was a box office hit, earning $33,415,129. In 2008, it was the highest-grossing indie movie.
According to Cameron’s autobiography, he once declined a television show because, in his own words, he would rather appear in or produce movies and television shows that align with his religious beliefs than spend more time as a fictional husband and father to a fictional wife and kids on-set. Additionally, he travels the country to deliver presentations and workshops on marriage and families.
2010s
The 2012 documentary Monumental: In Search of America’s National Treasure featured Cameron as both host and narrator. Monumental made $28,340 on March 27, 2012, the day it opened. The movie made a total of $1.23 million while it was in theaters till May 20, 2012. During a ceremony on the campus of Indiana Wesleyan University on April 11, 2012, Cameron was recognized and admitted into their Society of World Changers.
Kirk Cameron declared in 2013 that he will host the September 24, 2013, premiere of the movie Unstoppable. Cameron speculated that the film’s religious theme was the reason a trailer for it was removed on Facebook. Facebook later lifted the ban, claiming that an automatic system error and a spam website that had previously registered at the same location were to blame.
He played a father who supports his kid, who aspires to be a pitcher in Little League Baseball, while trying to protect his small business from lobbyists in the 2014 family movie Mercy Rule, in which he also served as producer. The movie, which was made available both digitally and directly to video, stars Cameron’s real-life wife as his wife. Cameron also starred in the comedy Saving Christmas, which had a Christian message, in 2014. The movie won the 2014 Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay despite receiving negative reviews from reviewers.
Kirk Cameron starred in the 2017 Liberty University student-produced movie Extraordinary. For a single evening in September 2017, it was the first of its kind to be launched nationwide. The movie centers on the dream of a Liberty professor who runs a marathon and finds that his marriage and body are strained by the cross-country journey. The Heart of Family: Six Weeks to a Happier Home and a Healthier Family is an online marriage course that Cameron and Noble developed in August 2017.
He assists parents in managing the risks of technology, particularly social media, for their kids in the 2018 documentary Connect. He made an appearance in an episode of Fuller House, the Full House Netflix sequel, in 2019.
2020s
Kirk Cameron began hosting Takeaways with Kirk Cameron on TBN in 2021. In order to identify lessons that regular Christians might apply to their own lives, he speaks with guests—many of whom are well-known—about important topics for Christians.
He played the lead in the financially successful anti-abortion movie Lifemark in 2022. David Colton’s adoptive father, Jimmy Colton, was portrayed by Cameron. Cameron’s faith-based children’s book, As You Grow, was released by Brave Books that same year. It tells the story of a tree’s growth and imparts “biblical wisdom through the seasons of life.” Cameron went on a national book tour the following year, reading his book to crowds that were frequently overcrowded at numerous libraries.
Conversion to Christianity
According to Cameron’s memoirs, Kirk Cameron felt that several of his scenes were out of keeping with his newfound faith and unsuitable for the show’s target audience of families when he converted to Protestantism. One of these was Mike Seaver, who was single, sharing a bed with a girl and asking her, “What’s your name again?” in the morning. For these reasons, he started demanding that the sections he considered disagreeable in these kinds of tales be cut out.
Kirk Cameron didn’t stay in touch with his former co-stars after the series concluded. According to him, this was a result of his and his wife’s wish to start a new life away from the entertainment world and, as he described it, “the circus he had been in for the past seven years” rather than any resentment toward any of his former cast colleagues.
He expressed his regrets about how his relationship with his co-stars changed following his religious conversion during the series’ production, saying, “I definitely kind of made an about-face, going toward another aspect of my life,” prior to the 2000 release of The Growing Pains Movie, which saw the reunion of the entire main cast.
I stopped giving the show—and even the friendships that were a part of it—my whole attention and instead gave it all to [my new life]. I believe that if I could go back in time, I could make choices that would not unintentionally cause harm to the actors, such as talking to them and telling them why I only wanted my family to attend my wedding.”
“Kirk’s choices for a lot of people seemed extreme, but when you think about all of the choices that kids could make under the pressure that he had, what better choice could you make than to choose a religious spiritual life?” said Alan Thicke, who played Cameron’s father, during a 2011 Growing Pains cast reunion on Good Morning America.
Cameron’s decision to convert to Christianity also led him to swear that he would only kiss his wife on-screen. This is why a scene in the movie Fireproof where his character, Caleb Holt, kisses his wife Catherine (played by Erin Bethea), was based on his real-life wife. To hide this fact, the scene was photographed in silhouette.
Evangelistic ministry
Through their ministry, The Way of the Master, and their co-hosted television program of the same name, Kirk Cameron and fellow evangelist Ray Comfort collaborated to teach evangelism techniques. For two years in a row, it took home the Best Program Award from the National Religious Broadcasters. Additionally, it used to include a talk show hosted by Todd Friel called The Way of the Master Radio. Later, the radio program was canceled, and Friel’s Wretched Radio took its place.
On May 5, 2007, Cameron and Comfort took part in a televised discussion at Manhattan’s Calvary Baptist Church against atheists Brian Sapient and Kelly O’Conner of the Rational Response Squad. A portion of it was broadcast on Nightline, and Martin Bashir of ABC moderated it. The existence of God, which Comfort said at different points during his ministry he could demonstrate scientifically without depending on faith or the Bible, was in question. However, as The Christian Post subsequently stated in a clarification at the very end of their piece about the debate, he never committed to this restriction for the debate itself. Both theists and atheists made up the audience. Discussion topics included evolution and atheism.
Kirk Cameron subsequently said on The Way of the Master Radio that the rules of the debate did not state that the Bible could never be cited, but rather that Comfort only needed to present one argument that did not make reference to the Bible or faith, despite Sapient’s contention during his arguments that Comfort had broken the rules by discussing the Ten Commandments. When Cameron used the lack of a crocoduck to refute the theory of evolution during the discussion, it became a meme that exposed the theory’s flaws.
An adapted version of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was given away for free on American college campuses in November 2009 by Cameron and others. The book had Darwin’s writings with several chapters cut out and an introduction by Comfort restating popular creationist claims regarding Darwin and evolution. Scientists and Darwin’s biographers criticized the book for missing important chapters and for including long-debunked creationist arguments about the science of evolution in its introduction, such as the connection between Darwinist ideas and Nazi racial theories.
The missing chapters were included in the second edition, which had a smaller text size that made printing the entire book as a giveaway affordable, but Comfort later claimed that the four chapters were randomly selected to be left out in order to make the book small enough to be inexpensive as a giveaway. The missing chapters are now available for download. Darwin’s introduction and terminology glossary are still absent from the second version. In reply to Comfort’s use of the banana as proof of God’s existence, the National Center for Science Education organized a campaign to hand out a banana bookmark and a critique of the Comfort introduction at American colleges.
Personal Life
On July 21, 1991, Kirk Cameron married Chelsea Noble, a co-star of Growing Pains, at Our Lady Help of Christians Chapel in Cheektowaga, New York. They have two biological children and four adopted children. Cameron and his family relocated from California to Tennessee in 2024.
Kirk Cameron Net Worth
In 2025, Kirk Cameron’s estimated net worth will be $12 million. Acting, filmmaking, book sales, speaking engagements, and Christian media initiatives are the sources of his income.
Filmography
- Goliath Awaits – 1981
- Bret Maverick – 1981
- Beyond Witch Mountain – 1982
- Herbie, the Love Bug – 1982
- Lou Grant – 1982
- Starflight: The Plane That Couldn’t Land – 1983
- Two Marriages – 1983
- ABC Afterschool Special – 1983
- More Than Murder – 1984
- Children in the Crossfire – 1984
- Growing Pains – 1985-1992
- Full House – 1988
- The Secrets of the Back to the Future Trilogy – 1990
- A Little Piece of Heaven – 1991
- Star Struck – 1994
- The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes – 1995
- Kirk – 1995-1996
- You Lucky Dog – 1998
- The Growing Pains Movie – 2000
- Touched by an Angel – 2001
- The Miracle of the Cards – 2001
- Family Law – 2002
- Praise the Lord – 2003-2013
- The Way of the Master – 2003 to present
- Growing Pains: Return of the Seavers – 2004
- One on One with Kirk Cameron – 2019
- Fuller House – 2019
- Takeaways with Kirk Cameron – 2021 to present
- Adventures with Iggy and Mr. Kirk – 2024
