The oily agent Ari Gold in HBO’s “Entourage” and the coked-out Las Vegas entertainer-turned-mobster Buddy “Aces” Israel in the movie “Smokin’ Aces” are pure, manic energy.
But Jeremy Piven, the guy who plays them both, is trying not to pass out during morning interviews on a recent visit to Atlanta.
“I don’t know how rock stars do it, man,” he groans, groggy, slouching forward. “Waking up really early and working all day until you get on a plane–that’s what’s kind of brutal.”
After working two decades in best-friend roles–often to his childhood pal John Cusack–the 41-year-old Piven has come into his own, first with “Entourage,” and now with writer-director Joe Carnahan’s blood-drenched mob movie opening Friday. Piven is now a headliner rather than a below-the-title player.
In “Aces,” Piven plays Buddy, a magician specializing in card tricks who gets involved with the mob and winds up cornered by the feds to testify against his underworld cronies. That’s when he goes into hiding in a Lake Tahoe hotel penthouse, as FBI agents and a mind-blowing number of professional hit men all try to get to him first.
Piven felt empathy for Buddy, a guy who went too far when fame wasn’t enough.
“He latched onto the mob, but he is unrealistic with his own skills,” Piven says. “You can’t just decide to be part of something you know not of what it is.”
Pause.
“That’s not a good sentence,” he sighs. “I’m tired.”
He soldiers on: “That’s what happens to people, I think,” he says. “Possibly you have so many yes men around you that one gets fairly delusional.”
Like, say, people in Hollywood, with their, um, entourages?
“Yeah, absolutely. That’s an excellent point. I think this can happen to anyone of any generation in any arena.”
A supporting actor Emmy winner last year for “Entourage,” Piven lost out in the same category at the recent Golden Globes. But he took his mother to both events. His mom, Joyce, who ran a theater program with her husband in Evanston and still acts and directs there, is best friends with John Cusack’s mom, Nancy.
Which leads to recent gossip about the Piven and John Cusack falling out.
Piven shrugs … and dodges. “There’s many things that we need to be learning on the news right now … let’s at least stay on the real news.
“I remember I asked Dustin Hoffman, ‘Do you still stay in touch with [Gene] Hackman and [Robert] Duvall?’ And he says, ‘Oh, man, I wish. It’s just that our lives are so busy.’ And so that’s all that is. The fact that someone would try to make news of it–I’m flattered that someone is talking about me, but it’s not real news, and it’s not a real story.”
So, back to “Smokin’ Aces.”
To play Buddy, Piven crammed three years of sleight-of-hand training into three months. “There wasn’t a moment when I didn’t have cards in my hands,” he says. “I didn’t have any skills to begin with. None. I couldn’t even do a bat mitzvah.”
But he ultimately got good enough to perform one night at Hollywood’s magician enclave, the Magic Castle.
In “Aces,” Piven spends most of his scenes in a bathrobe, unshaven, sweaty, his nostrils aflame from cocaine. How does he feel about looking so lousy?
“Fantastic! I think I look better dirty than clean,” he says. “Some people clean up well; I think I dirty up better. You can’t be vain as an actor.”
And he devoted as much commitment to his coke as he did to his cards. “If I felt like the character was snorting cocaine, even before [Carnahan] called action, I would be snorting as much powdered vitamin C up my nose as I could to kind of get into that moment,” he says.
With “Smokin’ Aces,” Piven might become even more recognizable, after a couple of years of having strangers come up to him shouting, “Hug it out!” The only real difference he’s experienced since transitioning from semi-familiar face to a pop-culture icon is that people are a lot kinder to him.
“They come up and say, ‘Hey, man, I really like your work,’ ” he says. “I wish that on everyone who works hard at what they do.”
