Life’s Gold for ‘Entourage’ star
Jeremy Piven’s character in the new Broadway revival of David Mamet’s “Speed-the-Plow” may seem to have a lot in common with the guy Piven has played for five seasons on the HBO series “Entourage.”
They have similar jobs and even similar names: Ari Gold (“Entourage”) is a Hollywood agent, while Bobby Gould (Speed-the-Plow”) is head of production at a Hollywood studio.
But Piven, 43, insists the two men are “very different. Ari is a volatile, abrasive, passionate wrecking ball. Bobby got to his position, I think, by being incredibly diplomatic. If they were friends, Bobby would continuously have to calm Ari down.”
Piven seems more like a Bobby type.
“I should be taking a break right now,” he said. “My pattern has been to do TV, then get in as many movies as I can when I have time off.” He wrapped two recently: “RocknRolla,” opening wide on Halloween, and “The Goods: The Don Ready Story,” due in the spring.
“It’s a very funny script about a group of salesmen, and I’m the leader of the pack,” Piven said of the latter film. “I just saw it, and I’m very proud of it. But I haven’t stopped working in 20 years, and to be honest, I feel like I really need to be somewhere reading a book. But you don’t say no to Mamet.”
Certainly not when you consider yourself a stage actor first, as Piven does. He grew up around Chicago, Mamet’s theater-rich hometown, which has continued to nurture and inspire the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright. Piven’s parents ran a theater workshop near the Windy City, where students included not only their son but also John and Joan Cusack, Lili Taylor and Aidan Quinn.
Piven’s classical training drew attention on the “Entourage” set.
“In the first season, I would walk around doing exercises to warm my voice up and making faces,” he said. “I got a lot of strange looks. People were like, ‘Who is this alien who’s landed on our set?’ But by season two, I started noticing other people attempting to warm up their voices.”
A young Piven first saw “Plow,” he said, in its “original Chicago production, with all these great Chicago actors.”
When the play premiered in New York 20 years ago, it starred another Chi-town native, Joe Mantegna, as Bobby, alongside Ron Silver and, in her Broadway debut, Madonna.
“The rep on her was that she was incredibly professional and hardworking,” Piven says of the singer/actress, whom he saw at the “RocknRolla” premiere. “She can still remember her lines from ‘Plow.’ ”
Piven was initially reluctant “to go from ‘Entourage’ to a show in which Hollywood is also the backdrop. But the guys in this play could be doing anything. They’re self-proclaimed whores in their profession, yet in the games they play, they’re also searching for the truth.”
The birthday bunch
Actress Nanette Fabray is 88. Actress Ruby Dee is 84. Actor-comedian John Cleese is 69. Country singer Lee Greenwood is 66. Author Fran Lebowitz is 58. Guitarist K.K. Downing of Judas Priest is 57. TV personality Jayne Kennedy is 57. Actor-director Roberto Benigni (“Life Is Beautiful”) is 56. Actor Peter Firth is 55. Actor Robert Picardo (“Stargate: Atlantis”) is 55. Singer Simon LeBon of Duran Duran is 50. Singer Kelly Osbourne is 24.