Jeremy Piven

For over 20 years, audiences have watched actor Jeremy Piven slowly rise in the ranks of the big and small screen. He made his breakthrough debut on the hit TV sitcom Ellen. He became most noteworthy for appearing in supporting roles alongside John Cusack in the films Grosse Pointe Blank, Serendipity, and Runaway Jury.

He recently won an Emmy for his portrayal of gung-ho, aggressive agent Ari Gold on the hit HBO comedy series Entourage. Now he’s ready to flex his considerable talents in Joe Carnahan’s action crime comedy Smokin’ Aces.

In the film, Piven plays Buddy “Aces” Israel, a washed-up magician who becomes an informant against the Las Vegas mob. Jeremy says the chance to play such a rich role was one he had waited his whole career for.

“I sat down with Joe Carnahan,” Jeremy says, “Joe said to me, ‘Do you want to go deep?’ and that’s like what you wait for your entire life as an actor, like, ‘I’ve been trying to go deep my whole life.’ So, to actually have a role that allows me to, cause I think in my own way, I have been, but it necessarily hasn’t been appropriate, because if you are playing the abrasive best friend, you know, and Nic Cage is supposed to be the man, you don’t want to take too much space.

So I could gather a lot of stuff from the cutting room floor and latch together some stuff that would probably be pretty interesting. But it’s never seen the light of day. And now it’s appropriate, so it’s a really, really wonderful time.”

The concept of his character being a magician was a rather interesting wrinkle, so he was happy to discuss how he prepared himself for such a character.

“It didn’t come easily to me,” Jeremy recollects, “Paul Wilson, who I work with, who is an amazing magician, did something really smart with me. We both went to The Magic Castle and got to witness all these amazing magicians. And you can do tricks and you can theorize, but until you can get up in front of an audience and really pull something off, you’ll never really know. So, for the character, I needed to experience what it would be like to pull off a trick.

“So I got up and did a very simple trick,” he explains, “Which is where you take a beer bottle and make it disappear and it was addicting. So that really informed my character, so you could see how addicting. Magicians don’t dabble, they really kind of go for it. They really make a life of it, so I can see why you would do that, so it would make all the sense in the world to me. We’re actually going to put it in the DVD version, so you’ll kind of see me learn this trick.”

Piven explained further the importance of each and every little nuance of learning a character, showing how each and every little gesture contributes to the shaping of an efficient performance on screen.
“One of the things [Paul] taught me is that you can tell a magician by the way he even holds cards,” Jeremy shares, “He has such a respect for the deck and holds them. He doesn’t squeeze them, does little things, always having the cards in my hands at all times. Like as an actor, you can’t ask for a better object to interact with.

One of the things a director first told me is like, ‘The first thing you should think about with your character is how does he express his stress?’ We all have stress, you know. How does that manifest itself? And so that was just a perfect outlet for me, so I got really lucky with this character.”

Piven’s role as Israel also involved his character to engage in intense scenes where he’s under the influence of cocaine. He says that to prepare for this, Jeremy used personal experience as his method to get into character.

“I’m really healthy right now with this and I have been for a really long time,” he discloses, “But back in the day, I did dabble. And I think artists are kind of sensitive people. It was an intense, visceral moment, even trying certain substances that I remember very clearly. So I can kind of tap into that and go back into that place, which is a very dark place and so, I can kind of just access that. I don’t know how to ‘take a dive’ as an actor so I have to really go to that place, so I did and it’s an honor to go to that place. I don’t think you have to be so method that you destroy yourself. I think you can be a healthy artist and go to those dark places and still be healthy. I really think you can.”

For a career spent a long time as a supporting actor, the now 41 year-old Jeremy Piven has now finally tasted true success. He looks back on the years spent navigating the ranks of Hollywood as a well-spent learning experience that he’s grateful for and hopes it will now bring him to projects closer to his heart.

“Not to be too ethereal, but you are exactly where you’re supposed to be and I realize that,” Piven reflects, “And then, once I realized that, my career started to elevate. I feel like I’ve been apprenticing roles like Buddy Israel and Ari Gold my entire life and, so, there’s not a lot of apprenticeships in this culture anymore.

:And I got kind of lucky and for 20 years, I’ve been around people that I really admire and I have just logged the hours,” he adds, “So I’ve gained the confidence and my father always said, ‘Being a star means that you have a choice.’ That’s all it means. That you got a choice of what to do artistically. And I never had a choice. And now I’m beginning to have choices, so if that’s what being a star is, then I welcome that.”