TIME Proves Piven Rules!

Funny man Joel Stein interviewed hot ass Jeremy Piven for Time magazine. The article is not that long but its great! With Entourage getting ready to ramp back up for Season 3, I can't get enough of any and everything Piven! God I love this man! Read the article...


It's the pauses I didn't expect. The machine-gun-fast hipster aphorisms I was prepared for: "No one pops a wheelie for their entire life" (on his career); "The fish stinks from the head down" (on leadership); "I don't do blow. What would I do on cocaine? Start barking and head-butting people? Flame would shoot off me. It would be game over." But every so often he would pause and look over to the side. I figured he was waiting for me to catch up in my notebook, but he would do it even when I wasn't writing. Jeremy Piven was contemplating.

Piven isn't known for pausing. He is known around Los Angeles for doing everything else: dancing at a club, filling in on drums for Wyclef Jean, jogging past the struggling hikers at Runyon Canyon, firing agents or asking another hot woman out on a date--sometimes for the second or third time, even if he didn't remember asking before. As a performer he's more frenetic, having made a career of playing supercharged supporting characters as if he were Al Pacino on a leash. His talent is being big and real simultaneously. Piven's brilliant, nuanced take on agent Ari Gold in HBO's Entourage (which returns to Sundays at 10 p.m. E.T. on June 11) is a cartoon of male rage--and Piven says he's holding back. "I could actually be a lot bigger," he says, crediting his theater work in Chicago, where his parents ran a company that trained such actors as John Cusack, Joan Cusack, Aidan Quinn, Lili Taylor and Lara Flynn Boyle. When he got his job at Second City, the improv group sent out the former high school linebacker in a troupe separate from hyper Saturday Night Live comedian Chris Farley's. "There are certain energies you just need to separate," he explains. A few minutes in, we switch tables at the restaurant because his shoulder feels pinned against the wall, his chair leg is boxed in by a depression in the concrete floor and, he explains, he can't move enough.

After a career of small movie parts alongside his buddy John Cusack (Say Anything, Grosse Pointe Blank), on TV shows (Ellen, The Larry Sanders Show) and on stage (Neil LaBute's Fat Pig), the attention from the Entourage gig has landed Piven, who turns 41 next month, his first lead role in a studio film. "I was always No. 5 on the call sheet, No. 1 in your heart," he says. But with the upcoming Smokin' Aces, a mob movie in which he plays what he calls another "flawed Jew," Piven got top billing over co-stars Ben Affleck and Andy Garcia. His days of coming in on short notice to bring some instant comedic pop to films such as Singles or Rush Hour 2 may be over. "You can be favor boy for the rest of your life," says Piven. "I want to contribute a little more."

Although not shown in the opening sequence, he has become the reason smart people watch Entourage, HBO's Sex and the City for guys about a hot young actor and his posse. In the third season, his character goes through more falls, including huge gambling losses. Creator Doug Ellin said he put Piven's name in the original outline two years before he shot the show. "He always is alive. He brings a kinetic energy that you can't take your eyes off," says Ellin. He was shocked that Piven's throwaway line, "Let's hug it out, bitch," became such a huge catchphrase that HBO built a website for it www.lhiob.com with ring tones and a dance mix. Not even Fonzie had a dance mix.

But as with his characters, Piven has, in addition to the barrage of energy, a surprising calm sweetness. Sure, he does yoga like every other actor, but he's really, really good at it. And to help a struggling documentarian pal, he got the Travel Channel to bankroll a two-part series they made together in India, Jeremy Piven's Journey of a Lifetime. Although the title made him sound like a dork, he came off as sensitive, curious and awed by the culture. And after our interview, he stayed at the restaurant to talk to people who work there about their live-music nights and the fact that the owner is from Chicago--which I discovered after he sprinted after my car to tell me I forgot to sign the check. When he stops moving, Piven is a really likable guy.