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Rise to Fame
He started doing commercials at age five and boasted over 100 by age 16, which is less impressive than it sounds. The career that counted started in 1998 when he landed Steven Hyde on That '70s Show. Hyde was the show's resident burnout and conspiracy theorist, and he was the most watchable person on a cast that included Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis. Eight seasons on Fox made him a recognizable face, though Hyde was the kind of role you don't come back from, in the sense that nobody ever saw him as anyone else.
In the Spotlight
He's in prison. Convicted in May 2023 of two counts of rape for assaults that happened in 2003, he was sentenced to 30 years to life and transferred to North Kern State Prison by December. He'd already been written off The Ranch in 2017 when the LAPD investigation went public. The victims were women he had known through the Church of Scientology, and that connection put the church itself under scrutiny. He's been appealing the conviction on grounds of lawyer errors. The earliest he could get out is around 2049.
Side Notes
The case against him was also a case against Scientology. The victims were fellow church members, the alleged assaults happened in 2003, and the LAPD investigation didn't go public until 2017. Prosecutors argued the church had been used to discourage victims from going to police. Masterson had been raised in the faith, studying Dianetics at 15 and attending celebrity events through his That '70s Show years. The church denied it. The jury convicted him anyway.