Photo by Justin Stephens
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Seriously Funny
By Lewis Beale, September & October 2006
Eugene Levy may be Hollywood’s hottest movie nerd, but he’s anything but clueless
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Here's a dark little secret about Eugene Levy, the sidesplitting comic actor whose loony characters redefine nerd: he's not very funny. Unlike some of his fellow comedians, he's not always "on," doesn't feel the need to punctuate his sentences with random or unexplained impersonations. In person, the 59-year-old Canadian native is strait-laced and reserved. He could pass for the high-school mathematics teacher who lives down the block—except for those famously thick and expressive eyebrows, which, Levy has told friends, "have an agent of their own."
Nonetheless, he has established himself as one of the finest comic character actors in the business. In the past 30 years he's become particularly adept at playing people who are, as Levy puts it, "not the sharpest pencil in the drawer." They are all endearingly clueless, slightly ridiculous—and utterly unforgettable.
'If you can get a steady check in this business, you’re doing okay.'
Think characters like Jim's Dad, the slightly befuddled father of a sex-starved teenager in the 1999 blockbuster hit American Pie. Or Mitch Cohen, the folksinger whose myriad nervous breakdowns have left him a bug-eyed wreck in the critically acclaimed 2003 mock documentary A Mighty Wind, which Levy cowrote with director and longtime collaborator Christopher Guest.
Despite the absurdity of the characters he plays, Levy relates to them in a human way. They all have a sense of "quirkiness," he says, and are people with "a sizable heart; you have to be able to hear the heart beating." That's certainly the case with Morley Orfkin, the clueless Hollywood agent Levy portrays in For Your Consideration, his latest collaboration with Guest. (The two also cowrote Waiting for Guffman, a satire about a community-theater group, and Best in Show, a send-up of dog shows in which Levy portrays a show-dog owner with two left feet.) Their latest mockumentary is about a small indie film—Home for Purim—starting to get Oscar buzz. Orfkin, who represents one of Purim's stars, is the kind of guy, says Levy, "who is constantly trying to cover his ass."
Raised in Hamilton, Ontario, Levy first won notice as one of the ensemble cast of SCTV, the Canadian comedy series that also jump-started the careers of Rick Moranis, John Candy, Catherine O'Hara, and Martin Short. Levy's obvious talent for character work soon caught the attention of Hollywood, where he enjoyed a busy but relatively undistinguished career as a second banana in a slew of forgettable films (Club Paradise, Going Berserk).
Then in 1996 he and Guest teamed up to write the semi-improvised Guffman. "We're such an amazing fit. We just seem to complete each other's thoughts," says Levy of his ten-year partnership with Guest.
O'Hara, a pal who has known Levy for 30 years and has appeared in all four of his collaborations with Guest, says Levy's strength is that he is "so methodical and prepared. It's a constant battle between the brain surgeon and the monkey inside him."
That inner monkey helped Levy attain name-above-the-movie-title status, starting off with his deadpan comments about sexual matters in American Pie. Levy stole the film, which led to bigger roles at bigger salaries. But stardom came at a price: reviewers suggested that by appearing in a series of lowest-common-denominator turkeys (including several Pie sequels), Levy had sold out.
Levy's famously funky eyebrows arch in annoyance when he's asked about this. His attitude is: so what? "I'm not in a situation where you get a thousand scripts," he says. "You want to make a living, you want to put your kids through school. I'd rather do three bad films that pay well than do one good film every three years that doesn't pay well."
Unlike many actors with his visibility, this one does not play the movie-star card: there's no entourage, no attitude, no bling. Married for 29 years to Deborah Divine, a woman he calls "the funniest person I know," Levy has two grown children, 19 and 22, and has lived in the same house in Toronto for more than 20 years. He has, however, recently purchased a home in Los Angeles, and he expects he'll be spending more time there, especially in colder months. "I love Toronto," he says, "but I'm not fond of winter anymore."
At the end of the day, he's just happy to be working in a business he loves. Amazingly, his goals haven't changed since he got his first paying gig in a touring company of Godspell, which Levy still sees as his most exciting moment in show business. "Before they hired the final ten cast members, they let everyone know, if you do get chosen, we're expecting you to sign a 12-month contract," he says. "That's a check every single week. To me, if you can get a steady check in this business, you're doing okay."
Lewis Beale writes about the entertainment industry for The New York Times, USA Weekend, Newsday, Los Angeles Times, and other publications.
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