List of That '70s Show characters


This is a list of characters appearing in the series That '70s Show.

Cast table

Main characters

Eric Forman

Portrayed by Topher Grace: The protagonist; Eric is a nice guy, generally geeky, physically slight, and somewhat clumsy. He is a smart-aleck with a fast wit and a deadpan sense of humor. He convinces his parents to let his best friend Steven Hyde move in with them, making Hyde like a brother. His father, Red, is always hard on him. Eric is in a relationship with his longtime love and neighbor Donna Pinciotti. He decides to become a teacher after high school, and he leaves the series at the end of the seventh season to teach in Africa, and returns for the series finale, reuniting with Donna.

Donna Pinciotti

Portrayed by Laura Prepon: Eric's longtime girlfriend. Donna is intelligent, good-looking, and a feminist tomboy. Although she does not agree with what Jackie represents in the beginning of the series, they become friends. Donna is in a relationship with Eric for seven seasons. She has brief romances with Casey, Michael's brother, and with Randy during the final season and quickly ends it. She rekindles her relationship with Eric at the end of the show's finale.

Steven Hyde

Portrayed by Danny Masterson: Eric's best friend and the anti-establishment member of the group. By the end of season one, Kitty Forman prevails on her husband to allow Hyde to move in after he was abandoned by his mother and living in squalor. Hyde has a witty, blunt, and sarcastic sense of humor, and a rebellious personality. He is also smart and realistic, and the other group members often ask for his advice. Although Hyde dates Jackie for three seasons, they eventually part and in the final season he marries an exotic dancer/stripper named Samantha, who, unknown to Hyde was still wed to her first husband when she married him. As Donna points out in "My Fairy King", that means Hyde and Samantha are not legally married. In the seventh season, Hyde meets his biological father, a wealthy African American businessman. Hyde also has a straight-laced half-sister name Angie from this newfound relationship. Barnett, who owns a chain of record stores, makes Hyde first the manager, and later the owner, of the Point Place store called Grooves.

Michael Kelso

Portrayed by Ashton Kutcher: The dim-witted sex obsessed pretty boy of the group who wants to coast through life on his good looks. He spends the first half of the series in a relationship with the equally vapid Jackie but their relationship comes to an end when Jackie wants to marry him and he isn't ready, so he runs away to California with Donna in the Season 4 finale. His best friend is Fez. He fathers a baby girl named Betsy during the seventh season after getting a girl name Brooke pregnant. He becomes a police officer but gets kicked off the force because he does just about everything wrong. He gets a job as a security guard at a Playboy Club in Chicago, and leaves the series during the eighth and final season. He only appears in five episodes during season eight, including the series finale.

Jackie Burkhart

Portrayed by Mila Kunis: The youngest member of the group, Jackie starts the series as the pretty, rich, spoiled, selfish, conceited, annoying, and immature girl. She makes thoughtless and superficial comments, which occasionally turn out to be correct. As the series progresses, after her wealthy father is jailed and her mother abandons Point Place, Jackie becomes less self-centered and is forced to take a job. She becomes more needy of genuine love and affection. Partly as a result of these changes, she and Donna become better friends. By the end of the series, Jackie has dated three of the four males of the original group: Kelso, Hyde, and Fez.

Fez

Portrayed by Wilmer Valderrama: The foreign exchange student of the group whose hormones seem to be out of control. His country of origin is one of the longest-running gags on the show. He is sweet, friendly, perverted, gullible, and rather odd. He enjoys eating candy, drinking beer, and looking at pornography. His best friend is Michael Kelso, and he shares a "younger brother" type relationship with Hyde and Eric. He constantly flirts with Jackie and Donna and often makes romantic advances toward them. Initially, he has a lot of trouble getting attention from girls, but during the eighth season he becomes a. He is in love with Jackie throughout the series, but his love is not reciprocated until the eighth season when they become a couple.

Red Forman

Portrayed by Kurtwood Smith: Kitty's husband, Eric's and Laurie's father, and Hyde's adoptive father. Red is a Navy combat veteran, having served in World War II and the Korean War. Impatient, short-tempered, often grouchy and constantly threatening to stick his foot up someone's ass, he occasionally displays a soft side. His hobbies include working with his power tools, drinking beer, watching television, reading the newspaper, hunting, and fishing. He shows no respect for Fez because he's a foreigner, sometimes he gives him offensive nicknames like Tonto and Ali Baba.

Kitty Forman

Portrayed by Debra Jo Rupp: Eric's mother and Red's wife, Kitty is a cheerful, doting, often oversolicitous mother, who can turn cold and assertive when pushed too far. A nurse and former smoker, she drinks far too much. Her major mood swings are usually attributed to menopause. She is also an overly nurturing mother figure to Eric's friends, especially Fez and Hyde.

Bob Pinciotti

Portrayed by Don Stark: Midge's husband, Donna's father. Bob often brags about his service in the National Guard, which invariably irritates Red. Bob is also known for walking around his house with his robe wide open and no underwear. He eats constantly, even in bed. Bob is almost always in a good mood and is a ladies' man. His best friend is Red, even though Red sees him as a nuisance. He usually takes the brunt of Red's abuse in a jolly manner.

Midge Pinciotti

Portrayed by Tanya Roberts: Bob's wife, Donna's mother, and Kitty's best friend. Midge was the sexy neighborhood mom Eric and his male friends fantasized about when coming of age. Although often dim-witted, she is also a kind-hearted woman who develops feminist ideals. She and Bob divorce when she is written out of the series after the third season, however, returns during the sixth and seventh seasons in a recurring role where she and Bob almost reunite and decided that they're better off without each other.

Laurie Forman

Portrayed by Lisa Robin Kelly/Christina Moore: Eric's beautiful but mean older sister. She is also the foster sister of Steven Hyde. Laurie enjoys tormenting Eric and manipulating her father. She is promiscuous, meaning she's often seen with various men, mainly Eric's friend Kelso, who cheats on his girlfriend, Jackie. Eric, Hyde, and Donna often mock her promiscuity, including calling her "The Village Whore". Laurie has a strained relationship with her mother, who, unlike Red, sees Laurie for what she really is. Laurie leaves the series during the third season but returns in a recurring role during the fifth, somewhat chastened. At one point, she genuinely seeks out a loving relationship, rather than merely a physical one, with Kelso, who is dumbfounded. She also becomes attached to a baby for whom she is babysitting, and feels quasi-maternal pangs, which soon disappear. In season five, she and Fez marry to prevent him from getting deported. In season six, due to Kelly's health issues, Laurie was portrayed by Moore.

Leo Chingkwake

Portrayed by Tommy Chong: A hippie, and the owner of a Foto Hut at which Hyde once worked. Leo is an Army veteran who served in World War II, where he was awarded a Purple Heart. Leo often puts play before work and maintains an easy-going attitude in most things, business included. He disappears from the series after season four but is later referenced in season five's "The Battle of Evermore" when the gang goes on a mission to find him, but with no luck. He returns in season seven and remains on the series until the show's end. In season 8, he gets a new job working for Hyde at Grooves.

Randy Pearson

Portrayed by Josh Meyers: The newest member of the group, Randy is introduced in the final season. Tall and handsome, he is laid back, polite, and forms a friendship with Red who is impressed at Randy's skill at fixing things. While Hyde, Jackie, Donna, and Kelso accept him as a new member of their group, Fez does not. Randy dates Donna for the majority of season eight, causing Kitty to be infuriated with both of them. Donna eventually breaks up with him, and reconciles with Eric when he returns in the last episode of the series.

Recurring characters

He only has real dialogue in the episode "Burning Down The House".
Several characters on the series were written as recurring, but made only one appearance. Among them: