Schmucks, sharks, psychopaths and… Jeremy Piven

In a recent  issue of Entertainment Weekly*, Jeremy Piven sets out to prove to his interlocutor that he is not an asshole as commonly believed… and reported.

What is so funny is that my character on Larry Sanders was a very schlubby guy. And then I play this character who is a shark and takes up all the oxygen in the room, and suddenly I’m typecast as that guy. But I really have to whip myself up to play Ari [Gold]. It requires a very specific type of frenzy. That’s not who I am. That sort of frenetic, abrasive, reactive energy is not my natural resting state.

I do not know Jeremy Piven, I have neither met him nor interviewed him like Benjamin Svetkey, yet I am reminded me of a wonderful story from Norman Mailer about my namesake — sadly, not my facesake — Warren Beatty:

Warren Beatty has a remark I love. I saw him in BUGSY, and afterwards, I was kidding him a little. I said, “Aren’t you concerned your friends might be afraid of you now?” because he had a violence in BUGSY that was really startling. And he said, “No, because most of my friends are actors, and what we know is you only need 5 percent of someone in yourself to be able to play it.” And Beatty grinned and said, “Of course, if you have 75 percent, it’s a lot easier. But 5’s all you need.

Regardless of resting states, I still wonder, purely percentage-wise, just how easy it is for Jeremy Piven to get into character.

What do YOU think?

* July 29, 2011

** excerpted from an article, also in Entertainment Weekly, January 19, 2007