Off Camera With Sam Jones

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Well, it’s the end of another year, and over here at the Off Camera studios we decided it was time to do something a little different. After over 200 episodes, I thought it would be nice to look back at some of our favorite moments in the history of the show, so we created our first ever Year End...

Liz Phair introduced herself to the music industry in the 1990s with her bold first record Exile in Guyville. Rock and roll was traditionally dominated by men, but Liz forged her own path to success despite the loneliness it entailed. She used her art to express her feelings about sexuality, gend...

Well folks, you are in for a treat this week, especially if you are a skateboarder. Mike McGill and Steve Caballero were two of the founding members of the most famous skateboard team in history, the Bones Brigade, founded by legendary skater Stacy Peralta, who had a knack for scouting young tale...

I’m really happy to have Jenny Slate back again. She’s smart, funny, and charming, and she’s refreshingly honest about her struggles as an artist and human being. Every time I find myself in conversation with her, I feel inspired and joyful. She’s just released a Netflix special called Stage Frig...

The first time Tracy Letts participated in a community theater play, he knew he found something special. At school, Tracy was shy and had a hard time connecting with his peers, so when he discovered the comradery surrounding the theater, he finally felt embraced by a community. His talent for act...

Josh Gad was drawn to acting ever since he took the stage as The Simcha Machine in Beth Shalom Academy’s kindergarten play. Onstage, Josh felt euphoria, but at home, he struggled with his parents’ divorce. Luckily, he found an escape through watching and performing in theater. Josh vividly rememb...

When Swedish born Noomi Rapace booked the lead in the original film adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, it changed her life, both personally and professionally. It was a role she deeply related to, and her striking performance as the hard-edged, androgynous Lisbeth Salander garnered in...

When Lance Reddick was growing up, he was a shy and introverted kid. He was one of a handful of African-Americans at his school, so he never felt like he fit in, and his introverted nature made him an easy target for bullies. In the face of these struggles, Lance had to confront his own self-perc...

For the past 25 years, Edward Norton has established himself as one of the greatest actors in his generation. His legacy includes roles in films like Primal Fear, American History X, Fight Club, and Birdman to name a few, and he’s the type of artist who constantly seeks to challenge himself. Take...

Jeff Bridges is back again, and this time, the legendary multi-hyphenate is joining me because he’s just released a new photography book titled Jeff Bridges: Pictures, Volume Two. Composed of behind-the-scenes photos taken throughout his career, the book is a wonderful representation of the magic...

Jake Johnson’s made a career out of acting next to some of the top names in the business, and that’s exactly how he likes it. From his vantage point, he’s got the best seat in the house, watching people like Zooey Deschanel (New Girl), Tom Cruise (The Mummy), and Cobie Smulders (Stumptown) do the...

When Adam Devine was in fourth grade, a bully turned the entire class against him, and it took Adam nailing his performance in that year’s school play for his social prospects to start looking up. One great scene made the entire audience laugh, and after the play, he was greeted by praise. “From ...

Ever since three-year-old Beth Behrs saw Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, she knew she wanted to become an actor. Beth’s perfectionist nature and her professional approach to the craft resulted in a driving ambition that got her into UCLA’s acting program and eventually led to her first role ...

Zach Galifianakis had his big moment of success a bit later than most. Zach was a stand-up comedian with a small but loyal following, but when the massive hit comedy The Hangover came out, his life drastically changed. At 40 years old, Zach was unaccustomed to throngs of fans and perplexed by the...

Writer, director, comedian and podcast host Scott Aukerman is a very busy man. He is perhaps best known for his hit podcast Comedy Bang! Bang! which has been introducing audiences to the most talented comedians and improv artists for the last ten years. And that’s just Scott’s “side gig.” He’s wr...

If you haven’t seen Andrea Savage’s comedy series I’m Sorry, you should…just be prepared to laugh your butt off. As the creator, writer, and star of the series, Andrea does it all—which makes sense since the show is based on her own experiences being a comedian, wife and mom. But it is also a sho...

Before she became a household name from her work in projects like Fresh Off the Boat and Crazy Rich Asians, Constance Wu was a full-time waitress in credit card debt who was trying to break into the TV and film industry.Despite her BFA in acting, Constance struggled to get steady acting work for ...

Wyatt Russell was born into the film business as the son of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, which can be a difficult way to grow up. But despite their massive success, Wyatt’s parents were a grounding presence who emphasized hard work. “They did a really good job of making us understand that what y...

Off Camera is back after a short summer break with all new episodes, and we’re kicking off the new season with a game of musical chairs. Writer, actor, and Saturday Night Live alum Jason Sudeikis takes over as host, and I take the hot seat for a change.The idea came to Jason while he was running ...

“Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on ‘I am not too sure.’"...

If Scoot McNairy hadn’t found acting, it’s possible he’d be mowing lawns for a living. Scoot grew up relishing the outdoors of his native Texas, and started his own landscaping company at age 13 to make some spending money. Towards the end of high school, he had some thinking to do about his futu...

As the child of first-generation Muslim immigrants, Ramy Youssef grew up with a sense of practicality about his future. He was drawn to comedy and performing, but he saw no one who looked like him on TV. Add to that the fact that acting isn’t exactly a pragmatic career path in the first place. “I...

When David Tennant was a child in Scotland, he spent his free time running around the back garden pretending to be characters from the TV shows he loved. In honor of his favorite show, Doctor Who, his grandmother knit him a multi-colored scarf to wear, just like his favorite Doctor, as he let his...

When Sienna Miller got her first big acting job on the short-lived FOX television show Keen Eddie, she had no grand plans for her career. Surrounded by a bustling crew and a shiny, big-budget production, she was simply happy to be there, and as a 19-year-old with zero drama school experience, she...

It’s been four years since Olivia Wilde last visited Off Camera, and a lot has changed—she’s had another child, taken a step back from acting, and embarked on a completely different career path as a director. “I almost feel like someone who’s come out of the closet. There’s this feeling of honest...

Fred Armisen is known as one of the funniest and most memorable Saturday Night Live cast members, but surprisingly, a career in comedy wasn’t something he originally envisioned. As a kid, he was obsessed with becoming a musician. Punk—his first love—was perfectly suited to his self-described “wei...

Acting wasn’t really on the radar of young Ian McShane, who grew up in Manchester, England in the 1950s. Even though his father was a professional footballer for Manchester United, Ian had a normal, working class upbringing. He liked to play sports with his friends, but when a broken leg sideline...

Andrew Bird grew up no stranger to music, and he started playing the violin was he was four, using the Suzuki method. But Andrew argues he wasn’t “prodigy material.” Yes, he was naturally musical, but classical training requires strict adherence to rules and technique, and that just wasn’t his th...

Growing up on a little island off the coast of Massachusetts didn’t afford Jason Mantzoukas, an aspiring performer, much room to interact with the outside world, but it was a good place for Jason to hone his comedic skills. “I was a little Greek kid in a very WASP-y town. I very much felt like ‘t...

All it took for Canadian-born actress Sarah Goldberg to realize she wanted to become an actor was a preschool production of The Owl and the Pussycat. And as she got older, the joy of acting in plays only intensified: “I discovered that being on stage is this point in time where everything goes qu...

For years, Weird Al Yankovic was dismissed as a novelty musician—here today, gone tomorrow—but it’s been 40 years, and his weird and wonderful career shows no signs of slowing down. “People often think that if something is funny, it has lesser value and doesn’t deserve respect. Obviously, not me....

Believe it or not, the origin of Seth Rogen’s incredible acting, writing, and producing career traces all the way back to Bar Mitzvah class in Vancouver. That’s where twelve-year-old Seth met Evan Goldberg, a fellow movie enthusiast who loved writing just as much as Seth did. A creative partnersh...

For over 20 years, Busy Philipps has been navigating the highs and lows of a being an actress in Hollywood. With unrivaled determination and a strong belief in herself, Busy left her home in Arizona at 18 years old for Los Angeles to pursue acting and briefly, college. Her dream came true sophomo...

Coming SoonWhen David Harbour was growing up in the suburbs of Westchester County, he was an outcast. A self-described nerdy and intense weirdo who preferred to march to the beat of his own drum over assimilating with the popular crowd, David explains, “I basically felt like an alien growing up.”...

When Joey King went to the premiere of her upcoming Hulu show The Act, she didn’t anticipate watching the entire thing through her fingers, but the role was so personally and professionally momentous that she couldn’t bear to watch herself with clear, open eyes. “I was sitting in a room full of p...

Brit Marling has created one of the most original, mind-bending, and creative shows on television with Netflix’s The OA; an exploration of near death experiences, inter-dimensional travel, modern dance, and much, much more. But the thing the sticks with you, and the thing that underlies all of th...

If you look at Lauren Cohan’s acting career, it’s clear she has a knack for playing strong and feisty women. She’s played a zombie killing badass in The Walking Dead, a secret agent in Peter Berg’s thriller Mile 22, and now, she’s chasing down international baddies in the action-packed ABC series...

Before Ray Romano graced our television sets with Everybody Loves Raymond, he was a hustling stand-up comedian, hoping to break into television like his peers Jerry Seinfeld, Tim Allen, and Rosanne. He followed all the proper steps—performing on late night television, selling out road gigs, and g...

I was excited to have Patton Oswalt on the show, because I have been following his career ever since I first saw him on stage at the legendary Los Angeles club, The Largo in the mid-nineties, where he made me laugh harder than perhaps I have ever laughed before or since. But as I learned in this ...

Over the last ten years, Norman Reedus has been kicking zombie butt and endearing himself to audiences around the world in the massively successful AMC series The Walking Dead. Ten years is a long time for someone who grew up with a serious case of wanderlust and a “day-to-day” philosophy on life...

Luke Wilson is not an actor who works hard to grab your attention. Maybe his natural screen presence is why he plays “average guy” roles so much better than the average guy. But it’s his less mainstream work that reveals him to be a truly nuanced actor who absolutely loves what he does. Wilson’s ...

We really wanted in, just to see what goes on in there. The quick, pinging pinball machine that is Thomas Middleditch’s brain seems a veritable bouncy house of voices, characters and jokes that might spit you out exhausted and a bit queasy, but having thoroughly enjoyed the ride. Long before land...

Imogen Poots has the resume of an actor twice her age and the chops to match. When you’ve worked with Peter Bogdanovich, Terrence Malick, Richard Linklater, and Cary Fukunaga, all by the time you’re 27, your bulb would have to be sputtering pretty badly if you didn’t learn a thing or two about yo...

Kathryn Hahn swears she is horrible at selling herself, but these days, Hollywood sure seems to be buying. With film and TV roles multiplying in both quantity and scope, she’s proven herself among the most versatile, funny and increasingly acclaimed actors working today. That has to give you some...

Keegan-Michael Key doesn’t encourage people to make decisions out of fear, but it did work for him—at least for a while. Fear of being left behind and not accepted made him decide that making people laugh could come in handy some day. And fear of uncharted artistic territory resulted in a U-turn ...

Though it’s probably not what Shakespeare meant when he had Hamlet pondering “…the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” it’s a phrase that comes to mind in pondering the fortune of Krysten Ritter. For years, she’s patiently taken every small, prescribed, and hard-fought step to acting—mall d...

At least once, and hopefully many times, each of us has experienced the rush of being completely transported by a musical experience – one concert, one song, or even a single riff. For 15-year-old Dave Evans, Moment One was playing guitar (loudly) for his classmates in a high school auditorium wi...

Despite his promising start as a vendor of illegal fireworks, there was never much question that Glen Hansard’s street trade would be anything but busking music—a practice, it’s safe to bet, would never be outlawed in his hometown of Dublin, Ireland, where it’s also apparently not illegal to leav...

Glen Hansard plays "Her Mercy" off his latest album "Didn't He Ramble".

Glen Hansard plays "Stay The Road" off his latest album "Didn't He Ramble".

To quote noir crime master Raymond Chandler, “When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.” Given that Titus Welliver was once put on a “Nastiest Villains of All Time” list, we weren’t sure what to expect when the Bosch star stopped by for a visit. Turns out he’s a lot ...

It’s hard to believe now that Breaking Bad was clinging to life for its first two seasons, but that was just long enough for Bob Odenkirk to be offered a turn as its lawyer-to-the-shady, Saul Goodman. Odenkirk didn’t see fit to memorize his lines before starting; he just requested that Saul sport...

Richard Linklater’s films have been said to carry “the shock of the real.” Funny, when you think about it. Why should we be jolted to see ourselves reflected in the profoundly mundane moments he’s become a master of capturing? Maybe it’s because he distills them so beautifully and honestly that w...

Kristen Bell’s early career dream was not singing or acting. She wanted to be a Disney princess. So tread carefully, karma-deniers. We put her self-described mix of “bubbles and rainbows and sunshine” at a good 90 percent of her DNA, but it’s that little ten percent that may reveal the most about...

We’ll let Judith Martin and Martha Stewart debate the merits of starting a poker game at a wedding; but we will argue, however, that any kid who picks “actor” as a profession with “musician” as a backup is already a gambler. Luckily for Don Cheadle, he was really, really good at both. Lucky for u...

Michelle Monaghan’s is not a face you want to cover up, though that’s exactly what she was once asked to do. In the 10 years since, she’s learned a lot about her craft. Having no formal training, she gained that knowledge largely on the job, feeling in over her head and questioning her abilities,...

When SportsCenter icon Dan Patrick said goodbye to ESPN, he had no idea what was next. For someone who never dreamed of anything but being a sportscaster, leaving the network he helped build took more career balls than Nolan Ryan ever threw. But such risks are usually mitigated in direct proporti...

Joanne Froggatt is now quite clear that performing in front of the TV doesn’t mean you’re actually on TV, but when she was three, all she knew was she needed to get in that box and live the exciting lives of its inhabitants. At 16 she did, as an unwed teen mom on Coronation Street, a role that st...

Pretense of any kind is just too much work for The National frontman Matt Berninger. It shows in the honesty of his songs, which tend towards dark laments, poems of human longing and occasionally, downright funny observationals. There’s even less charade in the oddly touching band-documentary-tha...

"No one actor can be in 35 seminal movies." It's not an unreasonable statement, but it does border on the ironic coming from Tim Robbins, an actor who's probably come closer than most doing just that. After his breakout in Bull Durham, Robbins became an almost Zelig-like presence in just about ...

If all great comedy comes from tragedy, Aubrey Plaza's great tragedy was not getting the part of Cinderella in a community theater musical. Cast instead as an ugly stepsister, her one song got all the laughs, and Plaza got the idea she was funny. Since then, so have a lot of other people - Judd...

It’s a good thing Linda Cardellini’s college goal was to actually not finish college (though in one of the few failures of her career, she eventually wound up graduating). It’s another good thing she heeded David Letterman’s telepathic warning not to come to New York. Both decisions led her to L....

Bill Lawrence’s “nothing bad ever happens to me” life philosophy tends to make superstitious people in Hollywood (there are just a few) scoot their chairs away from him whenever he brings it up. Call it delusional, but it appears to be self-fulfilling. One of the youngest writers and creators of ...

Despite going on about 20 years as one of the best actors out there, Paul Dano still tortures himself over which roles to take. He calls early choices like The Ballad of Jack & Rose “lucky”, but we’re chalking them up to instinct. The same gut feeling that steered him off the path of most young H...

Like a lot of child actors, Joseph Gordon-Levitt was famous for work in commercials, films and TV before he even hit college age. Unlike a lot of those actors, he actually chose to go to college for the chance to find out what he was going to be. Okay, so he turned out to be an actor, but not the...

If you’re standing on a castle rampart about to lead your men into battle (work with us here), you’re either a) an unfortunate time traveler; b) a delusional Medieval Times employee; or c) William H. Macy explaining his approach to acting. You know the castle is fake, the audience knows the castl...

When late bloomers finally blossom, they do so with a vengeance. When you take a bit of time to figure out what makes you tick, you can go after roles that mean something to you – and your audience. While having undeniably fabulous hair never hurt anyone, Connie Britton says she owes her best wor...

When you leave home at 17 and spend the next 15 years creating every possible substitute for one, it can be exhilarating, and also exhausting. Either way, it makes for a great story. Writer, actress, musician and Portlandia co-creator Carrie Brownstein realized her story was largely the story of ...

Readers, do you come to Off Camera seeking the cogent, the chronological, the coherent in your conversations? Well, stop looking, because you’ve just encountered the not-strictly-proverbial hot blast of cheese. Which is to say, this ain’t that conversation. Which is not to say you won’t find the ...

When Olivia Wilde told her mom she wanted to be an actress, her mom didn’t say, “Oh that’s cute, honey,” nor did she start dialing agents. She carefully explained the steps involved. Young Olivia’s takeaway? Actors study and work hard. Through more recent experience (specifically, Drinking Buddie...

The sci-fi-averse who’ve found themselves among the swelling ranks of Orphan Black addicts likely owe their fascination to its lead – and almost sole – actress, Tatiana Maslany. Perhaps that’s because she doesn’t view it as a genre show, but as a character drama. Investing one character with...

It’s hard to imagine anyone more suited to play Freeheld’s reluctant activist Stacie Andree, who finds herself battling for domestic partner rights while dealing with the death of the love of her life. Page’s own journey out of the closet was quite public, and while its ultimate effect on her car...

By simply tilting her head back to swill a mouthful of Pepsi, Cindy Crawford completely stunned two innocent young boys – and at least half of TV-watching America. If you’re on the seminal Vogue cover that heralded the advent of the supermodel, you tend to have that effect on people. Those and th...

Jake Gyllenhaal has lived many lives and lifetimes through his work as one of his generation’s most adventurous and curious actors. His intense prep for roles like Billy Hope and Lou Bloom is not about showing you how hard he worked to play those characters; it’s about telling you a great story, ...

Dax Shepard likes to go really, really fast. He races fast motorcycles and faster cars, and as a boy, jumped off 65-foot bridges for weekend entertainment – it’s just what you do when you grow up poor in lake-rich Michigan. He didn’t have a death wish, just a desire to prove himself to himself, a...

Take a peek at the show business lexicon and you’re not likely to find the word “guaranteed”; if you do, it’s a misprint. Kevin Bacon knew he wanted to be an actor before he even knew what the word meant, and after scoring a string of iconic films almost right off the bat, his success as a leadin...

Rashida Jones’ revenge fantasies are working out better than she expected. A serious student who spent a lot of time feeling lonely and somewhat geeky, her biggest ambition beyond Harvard Law School was to be liked, which makes acting a funny choice of profession. Sure enough, Hollywood doled out...

Did you know Chris Moore is the producer behind Good Will Hunting, The Adjustment Bureau, American Pie, Project Greenlight, and Promised Land? Well, he thinks you should – for your own good as a consumer of media, and probably for the future of the business at large. His passion for telling great...

Lizzy Caplan got her start in acting as Girl Number One on Freaks and Geeks, the coolest show on TV at the time (she worked very hard on her one line, thank you). It seemed to set the stage for a career-long variation on a theme of tough, quirky sidekicks in comic films and TV shows like Mean Gir...

When he set out to make Wish I Was Here, Zach Braff traded the watchful supervisory eyeballs of a studio for the virtual eyeballs of 47,000 investors when he turned to Kickstarter to finance it, offering them unprecedented participation in the process. He gained support in record time and then lo...

Jennifer Beals is something of a rara avis. She’s an old soul who can still delight in the wonders of life that so often disappear further into the mist with each passing year of adulthood. Her keen curiosity about the people and world around her lend the characters she plays an openness and auth...

Lake Bell first attempted comedy at age two (she bombed), hosted her first talk show at age 10 (she couldn’t book guests), dreamed of being an actor (her dad discouraged it) and then a writer (her first screenplay fell apart shortly before being produced). And it all worked out great, mainly due ...

In possibly our most meta issue to date, we talk to Jon Hamm about the end of a show that chronicles the end of an era whose themes still echo throughout our current era. Choosing the uncertainty of Hollywood over a promising athletic career, he struggled to be part of an industry that just didn’...

If Ethan Hawke’s career has a recurring theme, it’s the passage of time. The actor’s exceptional films with director Richard Linklater – particularly the critically acclaimed “Boyhood” and the “Before Sunrise” trilogy – are celebrations of the shifting perspectives, ever-evolving characters and t...

What’s so funny about Will Ferrell? Almost everything, yes, but why? Why do we love his parade of odd, yet universally engaging characters and movies? Don’t ask him. We tried, and got the most un-definitive, but probably most honest answer: We don’t know. No one ever truly knows what makes a...

What does it take to feel confident that you’ve made it in Hollywood? “Coming from nowhere with no connections” and going almost overnight to A-list status with leads in a string of the most highly acclaimed films in recent history would do the trick. So would a modest but steely belief that acti...

Captaining the Enterprise is one thing. Captaining a career that moved a warp speed from relative obscurity to leading man/action hero status requires navigating a universe of a different kind. It can be puzzling to go from not wanting to act at all to landing on Planet Box Office with very littl...

Jason Sudeikis switched schools to play basketball and found the stage. He worked his ass off to audition for Blue Man Group (three times) and didn’t make the cut. He finally condescended to audition for an acting gig on Saturday Night Live (read on, it’s complicated), but was hired as a writer i...

Jon Brion might be the most hyphenated man in the music industry. He’s definitely one of its most gifted. The musician-producer-songwriter-film scorer-hamburger connoisseur (a lesser known talent) is the mad genius behind a who’s who of recording artists and the oddly engaging scores to films lik...

It’s understandable that “Oh My God” was the only caption Surfer magazine could come up with for their cover photo of Laird Hamilton, whose drop into Tahiti's Teahupo'o break on the morning of August 17, 2000 established him as the greatest surfer in the sport’s recorded history. How he got there...

Some artists do what they do because it’s simply impossible for them to do anything else. Meet exhibit A: Taylor Goldsmith. At just 28, the songwriter and front man of LA-based band Dawes is already hailed as one of our most mature song crafters. His work has been compared not only to some of the...

For someone who balked at entering the family business, Jeff Bridges has one well-developed CV. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Otis “Bad” Blake 2009’s Crazy Heart and has received multiple nominations and accolades for his brilliant work in such iconic films as The Last P...

Say you’re an actor who’s been in over 50 films and on just about every TV show known to modern audiences, but no one can ever figure out where they’ve seen you before. You might start to wonder what you’re doing wrong. If you’re Judy Greer, you realize it means you’re doing everything pretty rig...

Jackson Browne is a master songwriter whose artistic journey spans the evolution of folk music and in many ways, the evolution of the music industry itself. That journey began with the de rigueur cross-country van trip from suburbia to NYC financed with $50 and his mom’s credit card. Few such...

What, me worry?

Editor, musician, actor, comedian – Ed Helms makes it all look easy. And for him, it kind of is. The secret? A supportive, if showbiz-ignorant family helps, as does a seemingly bottomless supply of self-confidence.

Helms left a happy, successful career as a commercial editor...

When a kid tells you he wants to be an actor and starts holding regular meetings in the high school cafeteria with his “business partner”, it’s kind of cute. When they establish a joint bank account to fund New York audition trips and the occasional arcade game, well, call it naïve. Unless you’re...

When you buy this bonus package you get 16 minutes of added content. Here's more about this episode: "Is there anything better than being paid to do what you love? If you’re Sarah Silverman, it’s being paid to be who you are. “I do have a need – that’s probably not healthy – to kind of tell every...

Drug dealer, football player, alcoholic, shooting victim. In his first decade of acting, Michael B. Jordan has found ways to humanize characters that, on the page, may seem stereotypically what he dubs “the black guy.” In The Wire, a young and very sheltered Jordan asked fellow actors to help him...

Anyone reading Wikipedia’s entry on Will Forte couldn’t be blamed for suspecting it’s the prank of a fellow jokester. High school class president and football player? College history major? Promising financial broker? Seriously? Entries for his more recent past (That ‘70s Show writer, The Groundl...

Martin Short grew up in a family full of funny people. He staged make-believe talk shows in his attic and absorbed a steady TV diet of comedy masters like Carson, Rickles and Paar, and yet inexplicably dreamed of becoming a doctor. Or a dentist. Always serious about success, Short gave himself a...

Stacy Peralta recalls his earliest and most visceral memories of skateboarding as the rumbling of the sidewalk coming up through his feet. Metaphorically, what he might have been feeling was the oncoming explosion of skateboarding, which would carry him to places he couldn’t imagine as a grade sc...

Any 7 year-old who inhales 19 ice cream cones in a row for her first movie appearance, arranges a clandestine meeting with an agent at 11 and inflates her age by an improbable 8 years to audition for the role of a 19 year old really wants to be an actress.

Maybe Laura Dern never really had a c...

What kid tells himself, “I know being a high school loner who reads comic books all the time will pay off for me”? One who winds up being a loner who reads comic books all the time. Or, one who winds up creating iconic comedies like Knocked Up, Superbad, and most recently, This Is 40. Enamored wi...

Being a bona fide badass is the price of entry for a career in rock and roll; and if you ask Dave Grohl, it’s the key ingredient for just about anything worth doing. His approach to life has fueled the Foo Fighters’ 20 year,11 album career and garnered him a following of very stoked rock fans, ma...

If pro skateboarders have resumes, Tony Hawk’s is undoubtedly among the longest and most envied. Though he’s the most decorated skater ever with the highest contest win percentage of any sport and a $1 billion video game series, Hawk has arguably given more to the sport than he’s received.

Wat...

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on ‘I am not too sure.’” ...

Aimee Mann, the Boston born singer/songwriter, Grammy winner and self-described Oscar loser, was recently named to NPR’s list of the ten finest living songwriters. It was a well-deserved honor, and put her in the company of artists like Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, and Tom Waits.

While Aimee Man...

After releasing two records with his former band Simon Dawes (now Dawes), guitarist/producer/songwriter Blake Mills went on to become a go-to touring guitarist and session musician for acts including Jenny Lewis, Band ofHorses, Julian Casablancas, Lucinda Williams, Fiona Apple, Conor Oberst, Kid ...

Richard Linklater’s films have been said to carry “the shock of the real.” Funny, when you think about it. Why should we be jolted to see ourselves reflected in the profoundly mundane moments he’s become a master of capturing? Maybe it’s because he distills them so beautifully and honestly that w...

Whether or not you’ve heard of Val McCallum, you’ve undoubtedly heard his work. Val is a supremely talented guitarist, singer, songwriter and studio musician who got his start recording for the legendary songwriter Harry Nilsson at age 18. After 30 years of working with such artists as Jackson Br...

Before Daniel Radcliffe became the face of the global phenomenon that was Harry Potter, he was just a typical kid struggling to get through his schoolwork and get along with his teachers. Back then, his only acting credential was the BBC miniseries David Copperfield, but he made a good impression...

From the this-just-in file: “Being in a band is not a normal job.” Chris Shiflett knows it’s a laughable understatement, especially when the band in question is the Foo Fighters, one of the few remaining rock acts that can record, tour and provide a (very) nice living for its members. So why does...

Ricky Carmichael would like to be able to explain what made him The GOAT. The work – figuratively and often literally backbreaking – is a given. But how do you explain split-second instinct, something that you just do? You can’t. So motocross fans and riders everywhere just sat back and watched i...

When you don’t know who you are or what you want to do, and you have no real intention of doing what your family wants you to do, and then you decide you have to do something you have no idea you can do, what should you do? First, avoid thinking about it. Lie to your loved ones a little. Then, wr...

Diane Kruger is the prototypical international actor. She's trilingual and has a career that spans across the globe—from France to Germany to the United States. In America, she's known for roles such as Helen of Troy in the the big-budget, star-studded film Troy (2004) and her role in Quentin Tar...

We all know that adolescence is rife with tumultuous changes, puberty, pimples and braces, but those are also our formative years, and our artistic identities begin to take shape. And no one I know took more of a left turn, post-orthodontist, than Zach Woods. You see, Zach really wanted to be a j...

To many, John Doe and his L.A. band X represented music and fans that were scary and unknowable. To others, punk was poetry set to a visceral sound that connected way beyond words. Before we talk to one of the most influential poets of the punk movement, we offer some context from Kierkegaard: “W...

"I will never do a sitcom. Never. You hear that universe?”

That's what Josh Radnor said to himself after some early rejections in Los Angeles. Little did he know that a few years later, he'd star in How I Met Your Mother, one of the most successful sitcoms in the history of television.

Josh...

Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be actors. At least not until they’ve had a nice chat with Mackenzie Davis. A late bloomer who was always “too loud, too tall and unable to figure out the secret potion of femininity” would seem a ready-made victim for an industry that tells aspiring actors...

In the ’70s and ’80s, Malibu, CA was something of a farm team for hot young movie talent, and Rob Lowe was on the right bench at the right time. The kid who took 60-mile bus rides into Hollywood (as an unaccompanied 11-year-old) to pursue his dream of acting got recruited for Francis Ford Coppola...

One of the most joyful and rewarding experiences we can have as humans is the discovery of something we passionately love to do-- and even better, the discovery that we're really good at it. For Thandie Newton, that revelation came as a naïve 16-year-old on her first film set. It also came with a...

As a high school kid growing up in Oklahoma, Bill Hader received a progress report from his French teacher that had remarkable foresight: “Bill is very funny in class. He’ll probably be on Saturday Night Live one day. He has a 37% in class though. He will not be speaking French.”

Bill had a na...

Sam Rockwell will tell you it’s not good enough to be good in a movie, and it’s not good enough to be good in a good movie. You’ve got to be good in a good movie that people see. After years of being good in good movies that enjoyed most of their success in the afterlife, he’s hit the jackpot wit...

Emmy Rossum has come a long way from singing for hot dogs at the local butcher shop. Of course her voice made her famous at 18 in The Phantom of the Opera, and she could’ve played Princess of the High E for years to come. But her decision to stretch, while difficult, landed her a surprising role ...

Mae Whitman started her career in tears. As a two-year-old, Mae accompanied her mother, a successful voice actress, to one of her auditions which was cut short when Mae burst into the room crying. The casting folks were sold and said, “Hey, she’s really cute. Does she want to be in a commercial?”...

How long can you continue to hear the word “no” before you lose confidence in your dream? If you’re Natasha Leggero, the answer is never. Rockford, Illinois was not a kind place for the aspiring actress. There was the art teacher who told her she’d never be an artist, the English teacher who told...

Peter Krause has been a fixture on quality television for the past 20 years, starting with Aaron Sorkin’s critically acclaimed and gone too soon debut, Sports Night. Soon after, Peter played Nate Fisher in HBO's Six Feet Under, exploring the concept of death in a way that was deeply moving to bot...

Since his role in Bridesmaids as the charming and lovable cop who really hates littering and broken taillights, Irish-born actor Chris O’Dowd has taken audiences by storm. There was his captivating Tony award-winning performance on Broadway as Lenny in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, and Moone ...

Even with all of her success, Rose Byrne still spent years of her career wailing and breaking down in audition rooms. As she says, “Women often have to start with a break down scene in auditions. Do guys have to do this? No. It’s such a cliché, but it’s always crying…or she’s got her top off. The...

If there's one thing Christina Hendricks thought she would never be, it's a professional actor. It took years for her to realize that getting paid to be an actor was an actual thing ("I don't know how it passed me by. I was a real bozo."). But if there's one thing Christina always wanted to be, i...

Growing up poor to parents barely past their own adolescence was not without its struggles, but luckily for Jason Isbell, familial bonds run deep in rural Alabama. Unable to afford daycare, Jason's parents often dropped him at his grandparent’s, where he spent the day playing music. As Jason says...

It all started with Ricky Ricardo and I Love Lucy. That's when young John Mulaney discovered the appeal of life in show business. Add his love of "everything funny" and some outrageous childhood experiences to the mix, and it's no wonder John became a comedian, even if it's an unexpected choice f...

John Goodman wasn’t always the imposing presence he is today, but he's always had his charisma. As an eighth grader in Missouri, John charmed the “hard guys” in school with a spot-on Gomer Pyle impression so they would protect him. As he explains, “I was a little fat kid. I had the glasses with t...

It’s hard to believe that a person who chooses to be an actor, a profession ripe with exposure and vulnerability, can also be painfully shy at the same time, but that was the reality for a young Emily Mortimer, who couldn’t even raise her hand in class without blushing. However, Emily handles fea...

If things turned out differently, Chris Messina might have been the next Baryshnikov. But growing up, the other kids in his small Long Island town wouldn’t let him dance without a fight—the ensuing nickname “Ballerina Boy” and other more graphic homophobic slurs followed him around for most of hi...

Before she was body slamming opponents as her wrestling alter-ego Liberty Belle in GLOW, Betty Gilpin was coming to terms with her own self-perception—the beta personality who sat with the bugs and observed human behavior as a kid wasn’t matching with what the industry saw on the outside. They no...

After an exhausting 16-hour workday on the set of Felicity, Keri Russell treated herself to a matinée at a movie theater in Santa Monica, and a group of girls her age caught her eye. She remembers, "They were just a group of friends going on a fun road trip together, and I cried because I wanted ...

Acclaimed Spanish actor Javier Bardem comes from a long line of artists and filmmakers, but his love of cinema officially took shape when his mother, a working actress herself, snuck him into a movie theater to see Bob Fosse’s All that Jazz when he was 6 years old. It wasn’t exactly a Disney movi...

Growing up, award-winning actress Sissy Spacek sang and danced her way through small town Texas talent shows, eventually realizing she was too big a fish for her small pond. By the time she was a teenager, Sissy set her sights on the music industry in New York City at the expense of a college edu...

Elizabeth Olsen had a very unusual childhood. As the other sister to the Olsen twins, Elizabeth had a front row seat to her sisters’ experience in the spotlight, media circus included, but she also witnessed what it was like to be a working actor—something she wanted to be but was embarrassed to ...

With Monty Python’s 50th anniversary coming up, Eric Idle thought it would be nice to put things in perspective for himself by writing a memoir, so he did, and the result, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life: A Sortabiography, is a comprehensive history of his life in comedy, and also a beauti...

When Carey Mulligan first stepped foot on set of 2005’s Pride & Prejudice, she was convinced she won the lottery. It was her first professional job and her first time acting in front of a camera, but there she was, acting alongside Judi Dench, Keira Knightly, and Jena Malone. “The entire experien...

If you ask award-winning musician Ryan Bingham where he’s from, he’ll tell you that there really isn’t one right answer. Ryan spent most of his childhood bouncing from one small Texas town to another because his father had a hard time keeping a job for longer than six months at a time. Ryan kept ...

Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s first true love was the ballet, but her body had other plans, and she grew a bit too tall for the grande jeté. Luckily, her favorite parts about ballet—performing, telling a story, playing different characters—are all essential tenets of acting, and Mary found herself in...

Early on, the stage was set for Rosamund Pike to pursue a career in the performing arts. Born to two opera singers, Rosamund had a front row seat to familial emoting. She tried her hand at both music and acting, but a bout of stage fright while playing the cello forced Rosamund to recognize that ...

British actor, writer, and comedian Steve Coogan was first drawn to the magic and wonder of performing when he was a kid, sitting around the television with his family and watching comedies like Fawlty Towers and Monty Python. It was before the era of VCRs, so the only way to record something you...

When Ron Livingston was a kid growing up in Iowa, he watched movies with the belief that being an actor meant you were transported to and fully immersed in the environment of the film. “I watched Star Wars and thought the actors were actually going into space and flying the Millennium Falcon.” Ro...

You may know D’Arcy Carden as the lovable, all-knowing, not-quite-robot-not-quite-human entity Janet on The Good Place, and while she may not know everything in real life, she certainly knew she wanted to act from the moment she saw her father in a local production of Thorton Wilder’s Our Town.
...

When Stephen Merchant grew to 6’7” as a teenager, he had a hard time blending in with the crowd, which was something he longed for. “Lots of kids in school would dye their hair pink, get lots of piercings, or do things to stand out, whereas I spent all my time trying not to stand out, trying to s...

Step right up to the Neil Patrick Harris Show! He acts! He sings! He dances! He writes! He hosts! He magics! But the showman behind the curtain is… pretty much the guy you’ll meet here. And that’s okay – now. In the public eye since age 15 and saddled with an unshakeable teenage M.D. alter ego, h...

Ten years ago, a timid and fearful Hasan Minhaj turned down the opportunity to go to his dream school, UCLA, and instead made the safe choice: to live at home and commute to UC Davis. A year after making this decision, Hasan sat under the Michael Jordan poster in his childhood bedroom despondentl...

Common is a man who is anything but, and he’s been evolving as an artist since the start of his three-decade-and-counting career when he was a young musician rapping about his love for hip-hop. These days, in addition to being a Grammy-winning artist, Common is an established actor, known for his...

Hank Azaria became a character actor because “With this face, I had no choice.” But it’s the plastic voice that really gave him no alternative, along with whatever mysterious, uncanny power has allowed him since childhood to hear someone once and mimic them for the rest of his life. What sets him...

Ever since she was a little girl traveling back and forth between Chicago and London with a carry-on bag filled with books, Rachel Brosnahan has been a lover of storytelling. Eventually, the joy of entering the world of fantasy and exploring her imagination opened Rachel’s eyes to the performing ...

As Pam Beesly on The Office, Jenna Fischer worked her way into the homes and hearts of Americans for nine seasons. As herself, Jenna charmed her way into the hearts and minds of the entire staff here at Off Camera with her endearing humility and self-deprecating nature.

Born and bred in St. Lo...

Michael Shannon is not here to entertain you or amaze you with the awesomeness of his performances (though that’s usually what winds up happening). So why go into acting, let alone do ten films this calendar year? In the beginning, theater was a way to get a few things off his chest without being...

Awkwafina (also known as Nora Lum) is having quite a moment. She's a part of the impressive cast of female icons (Sandra Bullock, Rihanna, Cate Blanchett, and more) in Ocean’s 8, and she’s so hilarious in Crazy Rich Asians that you’ll barely hear her next line over the sound of your own laughter....

Ted Danson, first known to most as Cheers’ charismatic bartender Sam Malone, is now in his seventies—yet even after nearly 50 years in the business, the passion that fuels Ted’s love of his craft shows no signs of subsiding. “I think the thing that has given me any degree of career longevity come...

If you’d happened to be skulking the seamier alleyways of Albuquerque around 2008, looking to bum a 3:00 a.m. cigarette – or perhaps a more powerful stimulant – you might’ve encountered a guy who looked a lot like Aaron Paul. He was looking to score an understanding of the role that changed his l...

Let’s face it, Kenneth Lonergan will never be the Mr. Rogers of Hollywood. He’s learned (kind of) to placate studio brass, but mourns the days when writers and directors had more artistic control (“Nobody told John Ford to make Grapes of Wrath less depressing”), and wishes he could just be left a...

When Andie MacDowell was a curious and wide-eyed 8-year-old, a trip to the university theater with her mother planted a seed. The adults on stage were playing make believe, her most favorite game in the world, and she was mesmerized. Add a penchant for prank calls and some improv with unsuspectin...

After spending seven years on AMC’s Mad Men and NBC’s Community, Alison Brie decided to take some time off from television. It wasn’t until she read a script based on the 80’s female wrestling show G.L.O.W. (“Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling”), that Alison decided to dive back into TV. Problem was—ev...

If you have debilitating stage fright and dyslexia, good luck becoming an actor or a writer. Octavia Spencer had both, and became both, and luck was not involved. What was: A strong work ethic (thanks, mom), a love of mysteries (thanks, Ms. Bradford), and unshakeable faith in her own talent. She ...

Ever since Regina Hall showed up on screen as the hilarious, sex-craven Brenda in Scary Movie, she’s never had to worry about getting work. But what she did struggle with was getting the right kind of work, especially after discovering the flip side to success—typecasting. “I wanted great parts a...

So no one told her life was going to be this way. Except Friends director Jimmy Burrows, who took Courteney Cox and her fellow cast members to dinner in Vegas, telling them to enjoy the last time they’d ever be able to go out together in public without causing total pandemonium. For Cox, who neve...

For those of you watching this week’s Off Camera episode, do not adjust your sets…that is me sitting across from Matt, humiliatingly dressed head to toe in a Red Sox uniform, having lost a bet to Matt when my beloved Dodgers lost in the world series for the second year in a row. And for those of ...

Struggle is just how Zoe Lister-Jones rolls. She watched her parents struggle to make a living from their art, and tussled with her own decision to pursue acting versus stability. She struggled to break into film, finally deciding that instead of fighting the system, she’d create one, co-writing ...

Listen closely to Elisabeth Moss’ monologue in Queen of Earth and underneath it, you’ll hear her heartbeat. It’s not nerves; it’s love. When Moss loves a scene, or hits her groove in it, her heart pounds so hard her mic has to be adjusted. She can’t remember ever not loving acting, something she’...

With a slew of acclaimed films and several TV series in the last two years alone, it seems Hollywood’s come gunning for Sam Elliott. Fair enough; four decades ago, Elliott came gunning for Hollywood. But not for stardom or money. “It wasn’t about anything but making film, and I knew the kind I wa...

As a film-obsessed 10-year old stranded in a rural suburb of Virginia, Danny McBride went with his parents to pay the cable bill so he could see where all those movies were made. Maybe the magic didn’t happen in that small strip mall office, but a film he made in a small strip mall 20 years later...

Jim Jefferies is an Australian comic who found success in America by mocking our laws, hypocrisy and leaders – and don’t get him started on actors. But before you take offense, know that he’s an equal-opportunity berator. “The most patriotic thing you can do, whether you’re British, Australian, A...

When you think about how many brilliantly wacky characters have sprung from Alan Tudyk’s imagination to the screen for the past two decades, and then factor in his history of prank calls and high school improv competitions, it’s a bit hard to fathom that his early career plan was to be a hotel ma...

We all have one or two turning points in life, but Michaela Watkins' life seems like an endless string of them. There was the classical music camp that unleashed her inner comic. The spontaneous road trip that became five years of regional theater. There was the backstage decision that doing Shak...

The woman huffing in impotent rage in a frozen Marshalls' checkout line with an armful of bras. The jubilant loudmouth barely able to articulate the awesomeness of a Monster! Truck! Rally! The lady blithely terrorizing passengers with her wheelie as she pushes up to the boarding gate. Nobody want...

It's ironic Holly Hunter won an Oscar for The Piano, in which she did her own playing. If she'd had the chops she wanted, we'd never have seen her in that movie, Raising Arizona, Broadcast News or so many others that made us swear she was born to act. Fortunately, she found acting almost as sacre...

Night after night, a five-year-old Rebecca Hall witnessed her mother losing her s**t, ripping off her clothes and wailing operatically while holding a severed head. That’ll either traumatize you or teach you something about committing to a role. It’s a lesson Hall probably never needed, given her...

If you’ve always thought of Hollywood as a competitive, jealousy-ridden place where success is watched, compared and envied, Mike White is not here to disillusion you. And his latest film suggests the world inside your own head might not be so different. Few writers understand our inner dialogs b...

Colin Hanks was just looking to fill time between acting jobs when he decided a documentary about Tower Records might be interesting. He had no idea how much it would change his outlook, his approach to acting, and essentially, his whole career. He also had no idea how to make a documentary. But ...

Here’s a question: How many years do you have to spend watching actors through a camera before you realize maybe that’s what you were meant to be doing all along? If you’re Jay Duplass, you might also wonder why your brother Mark didn’t let you in on how fun and freeing it can be a little sooner....

Tom Papa is a happy, well-adjusted, family guy who’s fine with being labeled “clean.” So how the hell did he ever become a comedian? He had no idea if he could make it in standup, and no roadmap to get there. What he did have was the certainty that nothing else felt right. It took a lot of observ...

When Chadwick Boseman got the call about Marshall, he was worried. Where’s the hard part, he wondered? The screaming muscles, bone-deep exhaustion and verbal abuse he endured to play Jackie Robinson (42), Vontae Mack (Draft Day) and James Brown (Get on Up) didn’t seem required to play future Supr...

Any number of things can fuel success. There’s talent and ambition, the usual suspects. But don’t discount fear, insecurity or being a wise ass, either. Check all of the above for Nick Kroll, but also add the belief that a career you love can’t be handed to you by anyone other than yourself. He’s...

Willem Dafoe is an actor who often seems a million miles from Hollywood, no matter where he is. It’s apparent in the roles he’s chosen, and how he’s chosen to play them. He’ll take Tanzania or a desolate Florida motel strip over a sound stage any day. He’ll show you the good side of a bad guy. An...

It was a dark and stormy night… Okay, so it was a dark and sticky-floored movie theater, but the story’s just as good. It’s where Michael Connelly first saw The Long Goodbye, and where he first fell in love – with Raymond Chandler, Phillip Marlowe, and most of all, with Los Angeles. He didn’t mak...

FX’s brilliant Better Things premiered just over a year ago, but Pamela Adlon’s been writing it for the last 20. She hoarded her experiences as an actor (hirings, firings, countless pilot seasons), and a single mom (three kids, untold fights, guilt and joy) –and wondered how she’d fictionalize it...

From the outside, it would appear that Sarah Paulson, after her Emmy award-winning performance as prosecutor Marcia Clark in The People v. O.J. Simpson, has "made it." She's got a role in Ocean's 8, her first "big sh**-kicker, popcorn movie,” and has the luxury of sifting through multiple film an...

Before YouTube became a ubiquitous and unavoidable black hole of viral cat videos, self-aggrandizing entertainment, and misinformation, it used to be a place to share your homemade videos with family and friends. That’s how the origin story of comedian, writer, and director Bo Burnham begins, any...

It’s been 140 episodes since Dax Shepard last sat down with me, and a lot has changed since—he directed a film (ChiPs), started Armchair Expert, which is one of the best and most popular podcasts of 2018 (after stealing all of my secrets, of course), and learned a lot about what truly makes him h...

It’s hard to come by any better example of a true artist—and split personality—than Andrew Garfield. He came out of the womb as “a lunatic, a wild animal, a clown,” who couldn’t hang with rules, threatened to tear up our studio, and regularly butted heads with a father who wanted him to choose a...

If you’ve seen Veep, you likely know Richard Splett, which could mean you know Sam Richardson. It more likely means you know what it is to be so convinced by a performance that you’re unsure where the actor stops and the character begins. How does an artist make that happen, especially when he’s ...

Taylor Kitsch has come a long way from cleaning the toilets on Buntzen Lake in British Columbia, and if it weren't for a knee injury that ended his dream of becoming a professional hockey player, he might never have graced our screens as the beloved Tim Riggins in Friday Night Lights.

Despite ...

You may know Pete Holmes as the creator, writer, and star of the Judd Apatow-produced HBO series Crashing—the semi-autobiographical series about an aspiring standup comedian whose life turns upside-down when he discovers his wife cheating on him.

As someone who wears his vulnerabilities on his...

It took a minute or 92 for people who watched Gillian Jacobs’ stunning performance in Don’t Think Twice to connect her with Community’s Britta Perry. That she could inhabit such different roles so believably without ever having trained in comedy or improv is a tribute to her talent. Whether it’s ...

Jerrod Carmichael grew up in Morningside Manor, which lest there be any confusion, is a far cry from Wayne Manor. His mom’s goal was just that he graduate high school. Carmichael’s goal was to have an HBO special and an NBC Thursday night TV show. Check, check and check, and he hadn’t yet exited ...

Like a lot of superpowers, the chip on Mike Colter’s shoulder isn’t visible, but it’s there when he needs it. Cursed with a stable home and supportive parents, he often manufactured his own chips to keep himself motivated as an actor (which he planned on being from the age of eight). But later, t...

Jason Katims, like many kids growing up on the east coast in the early 80’s, wanted to be Bruce Springsteen.  But with some encouragement from an English teacher, Jason discovered that he was a born storyteller, if not quite not born to run. So instead he became Jason Katims—writer and producer o...

Remember Slumdog Millionaire? “It’s about an underdog who has a dream and goes gunning for it, refusing to stop. You struggle and fall on your face and you pick yourself up and get what you want.” Freida Pinto was describing her first film, and perhaps unwittingly, foreshadowing her own career. I...

Yep, it’s our 100th episode – or issue, in magazine speak – and we can’t think of a better guest to mark the occasion than Ron Howard. He hit his 100th episode at 10, but hey, he had a head start, acting on some of the most iconic shows of our time. But from about that same age, he knew his futur...

Do you suspect you might be a comedy geek? If you’re not sure, let us help. Symptoms include – but aren’t limited to – regular interjection of the phrase, “Yes, and…” in dinner table conversation, confusion upon hearing UCB called ‘Cal,’ and a strange feeling of déjà vu when watching Veep’s feckl...

It has been said that David Oyelowo makes film stardom look as easy as laughter, and it is a joy to watch such a truthful and talented artist find success. But friends, it was not easy. He had to stand up to a much-loved father who had different ideas for his career. When he tried to build on his...

Dan Stevens rose to fame in the popular British period drama Downton Abbey. And don’t say you didn’t get a little weepy when good old Matthew Crawley met his untimely death due to a lack of seatbelts and a desire to leave British costume drama behind. Dan had this crazy idea to move to America an...

When you start acting – and very successfully – at eight, it’s easy to be jaded, obnoxious, or in rehab by the time you’re say, 12. Elijah Wood ran the gauntlet of childhood fame unscathed (thanks, Mom), only to sign on at 18 to what no one, including Peter Jackson, knew would be one of the most ...

When you grow up ping-ponging between three very different worlds on one very small island, you learn a lot about your place – or lack thereof – in life. Turns out you also learn a lot about acting. Not that Riz Ahmed ever assumed that was an option; despite the joy he found in school plays, he t...

If you want to know about Jenny Slate, you could see her standup, TV shows (Married, Drunk History), or movies (Obvious Child, My Blind Brother). They’re all very funny, and very adult. But at the heart of her work and her identity as an artist is a child – a beautiful, eccentric, wounded, wishfu...

For as long as she can remember, Maggie Siff has been measuring herself. It wasn’t vanity or self-obsession; she was after honest self-assessment in the name of getting better at her craft. It’s why she entered NYU grad school at 27, where the most important lesson she learned was how to deal wit...

Like a lot of kids, Adam Scott loved movies, but it was a 5-inch black and white TV and David Letterman that really blew his mind and cemented his secret plan to become an actor. When he finally arrived in L.A., it seemed the welcome mat had gone missing. Fifteen years and countless auditions lat...

Imagine yourself in a cage being pelted with spit and various other disagreeable bio-wastes. That would be a fairly bad day for anyone, except maybe Todd Phillips, who comes from the "by any means necessary" school of filmmaking. Photography was a way into film school, dropping out of film school...

It's a funny thing, how we're taught from a young age to wait for permission—to be excused, to have a cookie, even to pursue a dream. But what if there's no one around to grant it? Early on, Vince Vaughn decided not to ask for permission to skip school for auditions, to talk to the ladies, or to ...

Ever since banging out plays on her mom's typewriter at age six, Mindy Kaling wanted to be a comedy writer. That line of study wasn't on offer at her college, but Dartmouth taught her at least two things: If you hole up in your dorm and deconstruct Woody Allen films, you discover what works. And,...

There are a few things people forgot to tell young Kate Beckinsale about being an actor: Not every film experience is Much Ado About Nothing; most minors working in foreign countries have chaperones; and, don a pair of rubber trousers at your own risk. Oh well, you learn. And keep learning, if yo...

Nick Offerman will never, ever, have enough time. But then, he's not much inclined to put his feet up. Like most creatively restless artists, his interests abound. But for Offerman, they're not hobbies; they'e disciplines to be studied, mastered and revered for the values they represent. Juggling...

The talented and worldly Danai Gurira has been bridging the gap between disparate worlds ever since her family moved from Grinnell, IA to Africa when she was a toddler. In school, the self-described Zimerican (Zimbabwean-American) was the “African kid with a twangy American accent” who got along ...

After a particularly disheartening audition, Uzo Aduba sat on the NYC subway in tears, resigning herself to the fact that she’d never be a working television actor. “Uzo, acting is not for you. This is the universe telling you that this will never be yours,” she said to herself. So, with sushi ta...

Rachel Bloom remembers it all. The childhood neuroses, her first taste of humiliation at the hands of a stranger, the awkward locker room glances and every middle-school taunt. She also remembers how her talent and love of theater could erase so much of it. As they say, it’s all material. Materia...

What makes a kid cry on her birthday? The occasional cake-induced stomachache or bouncy-house bruise, sure. For Zoe Kazan, it was a sense of what she was leaving farther behind, and she cried every year. A direct and unselfconscious view of our imagination and its creative expression gets harder ...

Billy Crudup’s post-theater school plans for a steady, workmanlike, and hopefully long career spent perfecting his craft were jackhammered by Almost Famous. Suddenly he was Hollywood’s Next Big Thing, and completely unprepared for the dubious responsibility that comes with that crown. In fact, he...

You might not have recognized Ewan McGregor in his very first stage role, since he was in blackface and a turban, but it likely thrilled him as much as any role he has embodied since. The chance to do anything on a stage in front of people—even if it was just moving a chair—was magical. Some (oka...

Mark Duplass says that early on, he and his brother Jay wanted to be the Coen brothers. After 10 painful years of failure and self-doubt, he realized they were much better off being the Duplass brothers. Sticking to their shared gut got them promoted to Hollywood, where Mark found that success ca...

It’s been said that seeing ourselves clearly is the project of a lifetime. Coming from Michigan might be a shortcut. Jeff Daniels grew up in a small town playing basketball. Now he lives in a small town, playing guitar. In between, he played roles from The Squid and the Whale to Dumb and Dumber, ...

Fortunately, Greta Gerwig was never comfortable being the charming, likeable ingénue who exists (in Hollywood, anyway) to be adored and/or saved by a male lead. When she came to the realization that she probably couldn’t sit by the pool and wait for the scripts to roll in, she decided she’d have ...

Writer and director Paul Feig has an uncanny ability to reflect humanity. He showed us the cringe-y and torturous moments of adolescence in the cult television show Freaks and Geeks, and in his female-centric, hit comedies Bridesmaids, Ghostbusters, and Spy, his characters are honest and realisti...