Our favourite annoying next door neighbour, Steve Urkel, is now 39 years old!

Jaleel White played the memorable character in all nine seasons of Family Matters, even though he was originally meant to guest star in just one episode!

He was only 12 when he started playing Steve Urkel and has admitted that he had to make certain physical sacrifices in order to play the character for so long.

“I wasn’t changing my hair; I was staying out of the gym,” he said.

“To be honest, I was retarding my own growth as a man in order to maintain the authenticity to what I thought that character should be.

When the sitcom ended in 1998, White continued to act and went on to appear in TV shows such as Grown Ups, Boston Legal, House M.D., NCIS and Hawaii Five-O.

In 2012 he also competed in the US version of Dancing With The Stars.

These days, Jaleel is also a proud dad to his amazingly cute daughter, Samaya White, and is currently filming for the animated movie Guardians of Luna.