When he was six, his mother used her connections at AFTRA to arrange for him to appear on his favorite television program, local Los Angeles children's show Cartoon Express, hosted by Engineer Bill.

[4][8] Prominent Hollywood talent agent Hazel MacMillan was impressed with the photogenic boy, contacting his mother the following day offering to represent him.

[4][5] After hundreds of other boys' auditions,[3][11] North was asked back to screen test with Herbert Anderson, Gloria Henry, and Joseph Kearns.

[4][5][12] The season passed, and North heard nothing more from Screen Gems, but continued to work, appearing in a Christmas-themed episode of the CBS Western series Wanted: Dead or Alive titled "Eight Cent Reward".

In the episode, he portrayed Laddie Stone, a young boy who pays bounty hunter Josh Randall (Steve McQueen) eight cents to find Santa Claus.

[5][7][13][14] Over the next several months, North made television appearances on such shows as 77 Sunset Strip, Rescue 8, Cheyenne, Bronco, Colt .45, and Sugarfoot, and broke into feature films with roles in The Miracle of the Hills and The Big Operator.

North was paid US$500 (equivalent to about $5,200 in 2023) per episode,[5][15] his strawberry red hair was bleached platinum blonde for the role,[3][16][17][18] and the 8-year-old was instructed to "shave" a year off his age when speaking with the press.

[4][5][9][12] These obligations, combined with the required three hours a day of school, took their toll on him, and by the end of the first season, the 8-year-old had begun to feel the pressures of being the lead star of a popular show.

[7][16][27] This, combined with the unexpected death of the actor who played Dennis' foil, Mr. Wilson (Joseph Kearns), near the end of season three, had changed the dynamic of the show.

[4][7][8][22] North continued to audition, and in 1964, he appeared in an episode of Wagon Train, but found himself typecast as the impish Dennis Mitchell and had trouble finding steady work.

"[4] In 1965, he landed the lead role in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer family comedy film Zebra in the Kitchen as Chris Carlyle, a boy who, unhappy with the living conditions he finds at his local zoo, decides to set the animals free, causing chaos throughout the town.

[4] North narrated the surf film, The Fantastic Plastic Machine, in 1969 [39] After completing filming on the Maya television series, North found work as a voice actor for animated television series, providing the voices of Prince Turhan in the Arabian Knights segment of The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, Terry Dexter in Here Comes the Grump, and a teenaged Bamm-Bamm Rubble on The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show.

[3][4][5][8] In January 1972, while appearing in Butterflies Are Free, 20-year-old North met actress Kathleen Brucher, who had a four-year-old son from a previous marriage.

[3][4][8][40] In 1974, North appeared in his last starring role in the R-rated coming-of-age suspense thriller The Teacher, opposite Angel Tompkins.

[...] Avedis displays much concern for his people and allows Miss Tompkins and North plenty of room to give fresh, spontaneous performances.

He was assigned to the USS Iwo Jima, stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, as a seaman recruit boatswain's mate, the Navy's lowest rank.

He then began his administrative process and was temporarily assigned on board the destroyer tender USS Dixie stationed in Long Beach, California.

[22] In 1982, he landed a week-long stint on the daytime soap General Hospital, but steady work in show business continued to elude him.

[4][40] Financially secure from real estate investments his mother had made with his earnings from Dennis The Menace and frustrated by the direction his career had taken,[15][22][40] he retreated from public life for the next several years and worked in the health food industry.

[22] Later that year, he read for the role of serial killer Ted Bundy in the television miniseries The Deliberate Stranger, but lost the part to Mark Harmon.

[22] In October 1988, he acted out his frustrations toward Hollywood in a comedy sketch on an episode of HBO's Not Necessarily the News, spoofing his role as Dennis the Menace.

Dressed in overalls, striped t-shirt, and cowlick, 37-year-old North portrayed an angry adult Dennis, taking revenge on "Hollywood pigs" with a telescopic rifle.

"[22] On January 18, 1990, North received a phone call from Paul Petersen telling him that former child star Rusty Hamer from The Danny Thomas Show had died by suicide.

[3][4][5] North later joined Petersen's organization, A Minor Consideration, using his experiences to counsel child stars dealing with the same pressures and difficulties he had faced growing up.

[7] On March 3, 1993, they were married, and three months later, still financially well-off as a result of his mother's investments of his earnings as a child star, North left Los Angeles and moved to Hackney's hometown of Lake Butler, Florida, becoming stepfather to her three daughters.

[3][13][26][47][48] In May 1997, having come to terms with the physical and emotional abuse he had suffered at the hands of his aunt and uncle,[3][26] North began attending memorabilia shows to meet with fans.

I'm going to write my autobiography and then I'm just going to live a contented, happy life here in Lake Butler with the people I love, and kind of just vanish into the mists of time.