If you watched The Ring in 2002 and slept with the lights on for a week, you probably remember the kid sitting quietly next to Naomi Watts while that cursed videotape ruined everyone’s day. Pale face. Serious stare. Way too calm for a child dealing with supernatural chaos. That was David Dorfman, and two decades later he looks very different from the eerie little Aidan Keller who warned us that Samara was not someone you wanted crawling out of your TV.
Dorfman, born February 7, 1993, stepped into acting before most kids even finished learning multiplication tables. His first role arrived in 1998 in Grown-Ups when he was about five years old. Small parts followed in films like Panic and Bounce in 2000. Nothing huge yet, but Hollywood was already getting familiar with the kid who could deliver lines with unsettling seriousness.
Then came The Ring. At just nine years old, Dorfman played Aidan Keller, the quiet son who seemed to know a little too much about the cursed tape and the ghost girl haunting it. The film opened at number one at the box office and introduced American audiences to Samara, quickly becoming one of the most recognizable horror villains of the 2000s. Dorfman returned in The Ring Two in 2005, once again sharing the screen with Naomi Watts.
His horror streak didn’t stop there. In 2003, Dorfman appeared as Jedidiah Hewitt in the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. That film also debuted at number one. Three major horror hits in roughly three years. Not bad for someone who still needed permission to stay up past 10 pm.
Outside horror, Dorfman showed up in A Wrinkle in Time as Charles Wallace Murry and popped into TV series including Family Law, Joan of Arcadia, Ally McBeal, and Ghost Whisperer. Comedy even crept into his résumé when he appeared in the 2008 Owen Wilson comedy Drillbit Taylor. His last acting role arrived in 2010 with the horror comedy series Zombie Roadkill.
Then he did something most child actors never manage. He walked away.
Dorfman graduated from Harvard Law School and built a new career as an attorney. By 2022, he worked in the U.S. House of Representatives as Legislative Director and General Counsel to the Energy & Commerce Committee’s Vice Chair and Homeland Security Committee’s Cybersecurity Subcommittee emeritus chair.
Yes, the creepy kid from The Ring now works in American politics. Not exactly the sequel fans expected. But honestly, after surviving Samara and Leatherface, Capitol Hill probably feels manageable for David Dorfman.
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