For most of the four decades of his career as an actor, Jeremy Piven played That Guy. As in, “Oh look, it’s That Guy who played the cousin with anger issues on the 1990s sitcom Ellen!” Or, “Oh look! It’s That Guy who played the awful check-out clerk in the film Singles!” Or, most of all, “Oh look, it’s That Guy who always plays John Cusack’s obnoxious friend” (Piven has appeared alongside his childhood friend Cusack in Say Anything, The Grifters and Grosse Pointe Blank).  It’s not easy to be That Guy, to stand out when relegated to a bit part and surrounded by other, starrier players, as Piven seemed doomed to be. But he was good at it, giving the few lines he got in films and TV shows just enough character to make himself noticeable without being over the top. He has proved especially skilled at playing amusingly repellent men – the bullying footballer in his first film, the 80s teen movie Lucas, and the obnoxious writer Jerry in the cult sitcom The Larry Sanders Show, who gets humiliated by everyone from the interns to William Shatner.  Then, in 2004, he went from being That Guy to The Guy, with his career-making role in the HBO show Entourage. Though he wasn’t the lead, his performance as the foul-mouthed, hyper-aggressive Hollywood agent Ari Gold (imagine Malcolm Tucker with an American accent) not only stole the show but kept it alive for seven years. Any scene Ari wasn’t in felt wasted, and Piven deservedly won a Golden Globe and three Emmys in the role.  Now, at the age of 49, Piven has entered the third stage of an American actor’s life: the British period drama years. He is finally the lead in his own show, playing the eponymous Mr Selfridge in the ITV drama, created by Andrew Davies, which is about to start its third season. The series is about the life of Harry Selfridge, the American entrepreneur behind the department store, and though it seems almost a waste to cast Piven in something that isn’t a comedy, he so palpably enjoys strutting about in his waistcoat, grabbing at his pocket watch every two seconds, that it’s hard to begrudge him the opportunity.  Piven remains utterly besotted with the role. When we meet in an east London hotel bar, he nearly makes himself weep discussing his character’s recent travails and “yesterday’s massive acting feast. We’re going for it now – this season is gritty and dark.” He looks solemn as he considers Harry Selfridge’s plight, having recently discovered his wife is dying: “It really is just tragic.”  Piven seems to find a personal connection with Selfridge, and takes especial delight in the fact that, while he’s shooting in London, he lives close to Selfridges on Oxford Street: “Whenever I get lost, I literally just look for the yellow flags. They’re like my own personal breadcrumbs.”  Piven is clad in a tight jacket and a flat cap that remains firmly on his head, and when he first sits down he warily chooses a seat so far away, I have to lean my body at a 45 degree angle just to catch what he’s saying. But as the hour progresses, he gradually moves closer, slipping into seats nearer to mine every time I say something nice. Telling him that he stole Entourage, for example, merits a two-seat move and a happy, “Well, thank you.” In this appetite for praise and in his occasional total lack of self-awareness, there is something quite pleasingly David Brent-ish about Piven.  Could he have ever foreseen how much that part, in which he played an agent to a pin-up actor who lives with his buddies from home, would change his career? “No. Well, yes,” he decides. “There is a lesson here that I’d like to reveal. I got a call saying that someone wanted me to audition for a pilot based on the backstage life of Mark Wahlberg. I know Mark! That’s cool. He’s had a crazy life – and I love HBO, what a pedigree of shows. But people go, ‘Listen, you should be doing leads’ and [a few years previously] NBC had approached me about doing the lead in what would be this little show called Friends – maybe you’ve heard of it?” Anyway, he continues, he read the script for Entourage, “and I know Ari Emanuel [the real-life inspiration for Ari Gold] and I just thought, oh my God, what a character!… It’s a tiny role, but you have to put your ego aside. It’s not about where you think you’re at in your career, where your agent thinks you’re at – it’s more about what’s going to be the most fascinating piece to be a part of. You put your ego aside and you make the right decision.”  And you made the most of it? “Absolutely. For decades I made my bones by taking smaller roles, so it’s no accident I was equipped to run with it.”  When I tell him that one of my favourite films of all time is his 1986 debut, Lucas, which starred Charlie Sheen, Corey Haim and Winona Ryder when they were all – including Piven – teenagers, he laughs delightedly: “You never forget your first time acting in front of a camera. But it was also an extension of my high school, in that I got to play a high school football player.”  Piven grew up in Evanston, Illinois, near Chicago. His parents, Byrne and Joyce, were both actors and founded the Piven Theater Workshop, which trained, among others, John and Joan Cusack, Aidan Quinn and Lili Taylor. As well as football, the young Piven showed an interest in acting, and he and his sister Shira both studied at his parents’ theatre. He is still devotedly close to his family. He talks about how much his parents inspired him “as artists, who built a 99-seat theatre where they could be creative”. His father died in 2002, soon after playing King Lear in a production directed, rather symbolically, by his daughter, and his mother is still working at the theatre in Chicago. (His sister is married to Adam McKay, Will Ferrell’s comedy partner and the director of Anchorman and Talladega Nights.)  One of Piven’s early acting epiphanies came when his father took him to see John Malkovich in the Sam Shepard play True West: “There was so much maleness, so much raw mad testosterone on that stage, grown men battling each other and being so human, and I thought, ‘Wow!’” Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now was “another early influence”. In fact, he says proudly, he and Brando went to the same school in Evanston, “though that’s the only thing I have in common with Marlon Brando, unfortunately.”  Piven’s first break came in Lucas. It’s noticeable that of all the teenagers in that film, only Piven had a stable adulthood: Sheen’s addictions and Ryder’s shoplifting have been well-covered by the press, while Haim died in 2010 after years of drug addiction. Why does he think that is?  “Corey was a troubled soul, bless him, and we’re living in a time when people are so enamoured of fame. I think fame can be very inorganic to anyone’s growth; it’s certainly taken the lives of people we know and it’s very sad,” he says with an unhappy shrug. He brightens a little: “But then there are moments like this weekend, we raised a bunch of money for Aids and I got to use [fame] for good. Also, I’m doing this 100 Year Challenge.”  Before we met, Piven’s assistant had urged me, twice, to ask him about the 100 Year Challenge, in which the actor will skydive to raise money for a site commemorating fallen soldiers. They so clearly want this noted for posterity, it seems only good manners to ask. So, I say, you’re jumping out of a plane for charity? That’s quite something.  “Well, the sad fact of the matter is I’m afraid of heights, so I’m going to be on the ground with the troops,” he says. “But I was lucky enough to be approached and I feel honoured.”  Piven has form when it comes to being difficult in interviews. The New York Post once described him as “the biggest jerk in showbiz” and when he was polite to a reporter, it was deemed an event so astonishing, it merited a headline in the New York Observer: Jeremy Piven Is Not A Jerk (To Us, At Least). In fact, he was fine with me (though he had a temper tantrum at the fashion shoot afterwards).  I tell him I’ve never researched anyone with as bad a reputation as his. “Really? Well, listen, if that’s the tax on doing my job, I’ll take it. I think you can get caught up in getting the world to love you, but that’s a slippery slope. I think a lot of people are in pain and they’re projecting that pain on to other people, and if you give that pain power, it can be very destructive.”  He considers the damaging nature of gossip a little more: “You know, when I was a little kid in Evanston, I remember turning the corner and there was this group of girls in my class, and they were voting on who they liked, and they were like: ‘What about Jeremy Piven?’ Sometimes you stumble on things that you shouldn’t see.” And what did the little girls say? He looks surprised at the question. “I don’t think I tested very well. But it happens.”  One of the stranger side-effects of Piven’s success in Entourage was, apparently, the end of his childhood friendship with John Cusack. When asked by Best Life magazine in 2007 how Cusack was handling Piven’s success, Piven replied, “No comment. I mean, you could fill in the blank, I bet. It just says so much about a person if he has space for other people’s success.”  Cusack, for his part, released a statement saying, “It’s quite the contrary. I am very happy for Jeremy. I wish him the best and I always have.”  So are he and Cusack friends again? “You know, it’s interesting, because we met when we were kids at my parents’ theatre and my parents were doing The Seagull. We took turns playing the child and we were friends ever since. And Joan is such an angel. I have a lot of history with the Cusacks.”  That’s not really answering the question, Jeremy. “Well yeah, absolutely! Once you have such history with someone, then yeah. I think we were all lucky to find each other.”  Piven has just finished filming the movie of Entourage. Had he stayed friends with his fellow cast mates from the show? He hesitates slightly. “Well, you know, we were in two separate worlds [on set]. I represented the professional world and they represented the Peter Pan syndrome.”  In 2009, Piven pulled out of a Broadway production of David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow, citing mercury poisoning from eating too much fish. He instantly became the butt of talkshow hosts’ jokes and tabloid teasing. Even his co-star in the play, Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss, sneered at his excuse: “We were all surprised. It came out of nowhere. He just didn’t come back one day. I saw him like a month later at the Golden Globes, when he was supposed to be really sick,” she said on TV.  So what’s the true story? “When I was tested, they had to retest, because they thought the numbers were wrong – my levels were so high. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, I literally couldn’t stay conscious. Because I come from this credo that the show must go on, I literally didn’t think not doing the show was an option, but the doctors literally said to me that I’ve got mercury poisoning. But I stayed for four months of a six-month run, and it’s all a learning process,” he says earnestly. (When Piven gets a little het up, he leans on the word “literally” like a crutch.)  Why does he think people were so snarky about his diagnosis? “Well, I think I’m a very easy target.” Why? “Because I’m a white man who portrayed an incredibly volatile, arrogant Hollywood character. You know what I mean?”  Not really. “It was very strange to be that misunderstood because I grew up on the stage, so to be crucified [for quitting a play] was very strange,” he says with a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger head shake. Then he reframes it. “Hey, listen, we all have our journeys. These are gifts to help us be stronger.”  Main portrait: Incotex jumper from mrporter.com. Photograph with dog: Belstaff jacket from mrporter.com. Jumper and jeans, belstaff.co.uk. Shoes, johnlobb.com. Styling: Helen Seamons. Grooming: Lara Zee using MAC and Kiehl’s skincare. Fashion assistant: Hannah Davidson. Photographer’s assistant: John Munro. With thanks to Carolyn Davidson and Ralph the dog.
After decades playing the sidekick he got his break in Entourage and then landed the lead in ITV’s Mr Selfridge. Three series on, he’d be riding high – if only he wasn’t so misunderstood. Hadley Freeman meets Jeremy Piven