Hard work and a nice-guy attitude have made Jason Biggs anything but a loser. An acting professional since the age of 5, the well-mannered New Jersey native loves his family, respects women and apparently doesn’t complain about anything he’s requested to do in a professional capacity.
This has resulted in international infamy as an abuser of baked goods, not to mention, er, unmentionable parts of his own anatomy. But heck, it’s also made him one of Hollywood’s fastest rising stars at the tender age of 22, and he typically takes the embarrassment caused by playing the butt of most of “American Pie’s” humiliating humor like a good sport.
But like any showbiz success story — and with four other movie jobs since “Pie” hit it big a year ago, Biggs is bona fide in that department — typecasting is a concern. Take “Loser,” his first title role. It’s a great opportunity, starring opposite his equally hot “Pie” ensemble-mate Mena Suvari and written and directed by Amy Heckerling, whose exemplary track record includes “Clueless,” “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “Look Who’s Talking.”
And according to Biggs, playing “Loser’s” Paul Tannek, a friendly, naive Wisconsin farm boy with a ridiculous hat who is derided and exploited by “sophisticated” classmates at New York University, is a good first step toward the versatile, long-term career that he’s confident awaits him.
“About the role: It was cool!” Biggs says with enthusiasm. “I got a chance to do some physical comedy in `Loser’ but also to show a sweeter side and a little more of my dramatic side, which is nice. It was a nice transition from the crazy comedy I did in `American Pie’ and `Boys and Girls.’
“What’s really important to me is to keep challenging myself,” adds Biggs, whose pre-“Pie” resume includes daytime drama duty on “As the World Turns” and an acclaimed Broadway run at 13 in “Conversations With My Father.” “If that means taking on heavier dramatic roles, then great. I come from a dramatic background even though people, for the most part, have only seen me on the comedic level. That’s fine; a lot of people can’t do comedy. But I’m proud of the fact that I can do both. I love laughing and making people laugh at something that I did. At the same time, the feeling that I get when I am so deep into an emotion is equally as rewarding for me. I hope that I can do both for the rest of my career.”
If he keeps impressing filmmakers as he did Heckerling, that hope should be realized.
“Oh my God, Jason is amazing,” the director says. “Jason is cute, he’s funny and he really can act, and he’s also a dream to work with.”
Biggs’ work ethic, he says, was inherited from his parents, a pediatric nurse and a shipping company manager.
“Both of them worked their butts off and gave up a lot for me to be here,” Biggs says. “And they definitely raised me very well: great morals, great values, all instilled in me by my parents. Biggs got into show business by following an older sister who was studying singing and dance to auditions in nearby Manhattan. He modeled and appeared in commercials shot in the New York area as a child, and he moved to Los Angeles three years ago for a role on a short-lived Steven Bochco television series, “Total Security.” There were a few nervous months between that show’s cancellation and getting hired as “Pie’s” poster boy for teenage sexual frustration, but Biggs nevertheless fell in love with his new home.
“What’s cool is that you can go to the beach and the mountains in the same day,” says the actor, who’s become an avid mountain biker and snowboarder. “People ask, `Don’t you hate living in L.A.?’ and I’ll just be like, `Look, I can go snowboarding in the morning and then watch the sun set over the ocean. You do that anywhere else!”‘
There seems to be a bit of too-kind-for-his-own-good Paul Tannek in Biggs, although the actor insists that the role represents his greatest stretch to date.
“Paul was more of a, quote/unquote, character than anything I’ve played,” Biggs insists. “Both the characters in `American Pie’ and `Boys and Girls’ brought out more of me than he did. Paul was a chance for me to really make something, with the challenge of keeping him sympathetic while still making him a pretty big loser.”
Probe a little further, however, and you learn that one of the few things Biggs might wish to change about his own personality is the very thing that makes Paul such an ineffectual doormat.
“If I don’t answer a question like that, that’s like saying I’m perfect, which is so not true,” Biggs says with a laugh. “What I would change about myself is kind of a detriment, but it’s also an attribute, and that is always trying to see the good in people. There are some times when that ends up biting you in the butt.”
In the upcoming “Prozac Nation,” he has a straightforward, demanding dramatic role as the college boyfriend of a manic depressive young woman, played by Christina Ricci.
“It sounds kind of trite, but this got me in touch with feelings that I’d never dealt with before,” Biggs says of the “Prozac” part. “I had to love this woman but still be confused, not knowing how to deal with her episodes; it was just a lot of emotional stuff and really cool.”
“Saving Silverman,” which Biggs is currently filming in Canada, is another outrageous comedy in which he plays a lovelorn typewhose whirlwind romance (with “The Whole Nine Yards”‘ Amanda Peet) is feloniously intervened upon by two guys who are convinced the woman is the worst thing that ever happened to their pal Silverman.
“There’s a little of that shock-value humor in `Saving Silverman,’ but it relies more on zany situations,” Biggs cautions. ” And now that he’s a hot commodity, Biggs says, he’d be more likely than before to subject himself to “Pie”-style cinematic ridicule.
“I’d probably be a little more apt to do (the pie scene) now,” he says. “Back then, I was willing to do it because I knew how funny it was and that the movie was full of potential, but there was still a little part of me thinking that maybe I might be jeopardizing something. But now I’d be like, `I’m going for it!”‘
But Biggs also knows that such childish things will have to fall away if he’s going to maintain his success over the long haul. Youth sex gags will pass, along with many of the young actors who are currently making them for a living.
Not to sound egotistical or anything — he’s much too polite a fellow to be like that — but Biggs feels certain that he’s one nice guy who’s going to last.
“I am confident, and I say this as humbly as possible, talent prevails in the end,” he says. “I know what I can do and I’m confident that I can make a long career out of this. There is this whole business side of it — you can make a bad movie, things can happen, and suddenly you’re not the flavor of the month anymore, talent unfortunately aside. But I like to think that I will be a survivor out of this group of young talent; I believe I’ve capitalized on the right situations.”
