Surprisingly, the most difficult thing about talking to John Krasinski, who plays the charming, practical-joking paper salesman Jim Halpert on The Office, isn’t resisting the urge to make a “That’s what she said” joke at every opportunity. No, the largest challenge in talking to the 29-year-old actor is to not call him “Big Tuna.” Next week, he can be seen in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (which he also directed)—an adaptation of the beloved story collection by the late David Foster Wallace. We caught up with Big Tu…Krasinski, rather, in the midst of a fantasy football draft.

My mom is a big fan of The Office. She says Jim reminds her of me.
Oh my God.

I don’t really see it.
No, you do see it. You’re a charming guy. We all love you, Drew, come home!

Better than if she told me that I reminded her of Dwight, I suppose.
Yeah, that would be really scary. Don’t ever come home if that’s the case.

See the rest of this hard-hitting interview after the break.

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The Daily Show has a long and storied history of hilarious and slightly unhinged correspondents. Rob Riggle, who left the show at the end of 2008, was especially manic when going after the fake-news scoop. But the 39-year-old isn’t merely a clown—he was recently promoted to lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves. So, yeah, he’ll make you laugh—but cross him at your own peril. In his latest film, The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, Riggle appears alongside the likes of Jeremy Piven and Tony Hale in a film about selling cars.

Everything I know about conducting interviews I learned from you on The Daily Show.
Oh God! [Laughs] That’s terrifying. I guess I’ll get ready for a lot of screaming.

Just kidding. Tell us about your role in this film, Colonel Riggle.
Well, this is a tricky one. I play a ten-year-old boy with a pituitary problem [Laughs]. So, there you go.

Sounds like the role you were born for.
You know, it felt like it. Really jumped off the page at me. I was very grateful to get the role, and to figure out how I was gonna do it. You didn’t want to come off as mentally challenged.

You’re the new Clifford.
No! No, no, no. I would never try to reprise that role.

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For several sun- and drama-drenched seasons on Josh Schwartz’s prime-time soap The O.C., Adam Brody’s portrayal of the neurotic comic-book nerd Seth Cohen gave hope to nonjocks everywhere—proof positive that geeks could, in fact, get the girl. We’re now a few years removed from that sultry West Coast class war, and in his latest film, Death in Love, the 29-year-old actor plays a darker character—one more at ease with himself, but also with more questionable motivations. Brody, a sometime indie-rock drummer in the band Big Japan, is currently hanging out in our town (and pissing off Greenpoint denizens), shooting the forthcoming Kevin Smith film, A Couple of Dicks.

At the heart of Death in Love is a romance between a young Jewish girl and a Nazi doctor. Hardly an ideal match.
No. And I mean, even that splinters in so many ways. I guess that’s the main story line. But then it goes into the family so much, and everyone is kind of falling in love in their own way.

Is the lesson in this film that Nazis feel love too?
Well, I’m sure Nazis can feel love. We’re all human at some point. Or an animal. The movie is so much about the difference between pleasure and pain, masochism and all that stuff. So it’s all about where that line is.

Josh Lucas’s character is really scarred from his mom’s forbidden love. What’s the least cool trait you’ve inherited from your parents?
The least cool thing? Good question. Well, let’s see. I didn’t get diabetes yet, so that’s cool. Oh, we’re not good at basketball. That was a disappointment, especially when I was younger. I’ve come to terms with it. I could’ve used some more hops. That would’ve been nice.

Lucas also has a pretty…interesting relationship with his boss. Have you ever had anything like that with a superior?
No, I’ve never had like a sexy female boss. But I’m totally open to it. That’s like my dream. That is the dream, to have a domineering, hot boss.

You play something of a confidence man. You grift your buddy good.
Yes. Served him right.

If acting and music start to bore you, have you considered a career as a con artist?
Oh man. You know, I can’t stomach—and it’s not because I’m a nice person, necessarily—I can’t stomach pissing other people off. I want everyone to be happy. For instance, the kind of thing Sacha Baron Cohen does, who revels in that awkwardness, I could never, never do that. The fact that they know later, and then would want to kill me for the rest of their lives, would really bother me.

For what it’s worth, if you change your mind, I wouldn’t mind playing Redford to your Newman in the long con.
Great. Listen, man, I want to do all sorts of stuff in movies. But yeah, in real life, maybe. I hope so. We’ll take it on the road. Great.

I guess you already have a partner in the buddy-cop movie you’re working on—A Couple of Dicks.
Yeah, Tracy Morgan and Bruce Willis. My partner is Kevin Pollak, so I’ve worked with him a few days, and then I’ve worked with him and Bruce another day. But I haven’t seen Tracy and Bruce together yet. I’m very curious.

You’re on the same police force as John McClane!
Believe me, I do not take that for granted. It is fucking rad. I was at the table next to him, and he’s playing a hungover cop. He’s doing quintessential Bruce Willis shit. It is really cool. And you know, there’s a scene at the end of the movie where he sort of covers me when we’re in a shoot-out together. I can’t wait. I can’t wait. It is awesome.

Die Hard is still my favorite Christmas movie.
Yeah. It’s a perfect film.

Death in Love opens Fri 17.

There are plenty of good-looking redheaded female celebrities out there—you know, Nicole Kidman, Lindsay Lohan, Scarlett from G.I. Joe (that one is for my seven-year-old self). There is less competition, however, when it comes to famous ginger dudes, and Harry Potter’s Rupert Grint appears to have distanced himself from the pack—dusting the likes of Ron Howard and Ronald McDonald—when he was this year voted Rolling Stone’s “Hottest Sidekick.” We spoke with Grint about this great honor, as well as the eBayability of various Harry Potter set pieces.

Still filming the last Potter?
Yeah, we’re nearly halfway there. We’re sort of filming in the forest at the moment. It’s going really well. It’s a lot to include, because it’s two films. We’re doing part one and part two. I’m enjoying it.

Excited to be just plain old Rupe again, as opposed to Ron Weasley?
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s going to be quite weird when it’s all over, because it has been such a massive part of my life. I think I’ll miss it, in a way, but I am looking forward to freedom, really, when it’s all over.

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After six years and seven seasons of having her life filmed (two stints on Laguna Beach and five on her own spin-off, The Hills), Lauren Conrad is ready to turn off her mike. “I wanted to leave on a good note,” she says. “It can only be great for so long, and I think I stayed with it long enough.” So what’s next? The 23-year-old already has her own fashion label (though it’s temporarily on hold) and an endorsement deal with Avon’s product line for younger women, and she’s got a young-adult novel coming out this week. The first of a three-book series, L.A. Candy is about a 19-year-old girl who moves to Los Angeles and becomes the star of a reality TV show. Hmm, sounds familiar.

You’re a pretty busy gal. How’d you find time to write a book?
When you get ready to write a book, you have no idea about the time commitment that’s needed. I knew it was going to be a lot of work, but we had to push the deadline more than once. Knowing that I would be really tired from writing, I had planned a four-day vacation with my parents to Mexico right after my last deadline. But I ended up pushing the deadline, so I spent almost the entire vacation in my room working while it was beautiful outside.

Read the rest of the interview after the break.

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Defamer posted this amazing, horrifying video of Twilight fans reacting to news of a new film full of chaste, glittery undead or whatever. (If Al Jazeera gets a hold of this, the terrorists will certainly rededicate themselves to killing America in a sea of twinkly, mindless, shrieking infidel blood.) It doesn’t seem a huge stretch to say that vampires have become totally lame, except for Anna Paquin’s bloodsucking friends on HBO’s True Blood. Now those are vampires that would make Max Schreck proud. We spoke to Paquin about the show, and also about the time of her life when she resided inside a cello case.

So you slept through our original interview time. Out late last night, huh?
We shot nights for two consecutive weeks. We’re on vampire hours. I don’t party. I’m not that cool.

Never?
It’s not like I’ve never partied. As soon as you don’t need a fake ID, it kind of loses its appeal.

You had a fake ID?
Course I did. I look like I’m 12! Especially when I was in college. A couple of occasions I had a bouncer look at it and go, no, you’re not so-and-so. If I tried to say yes, I am, they’d go, “No, you’re not, you’re Anna Paquin!” Like, they’ll know because my movie is playing across the street. They’d be like, this is the worst fake ID I’ve ever seen, go away.

Read about more trials of underaged stardom after the break.

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It’s been more than ten years since Brooklyn native Edie Falco began working on the acclaimed HBO Mafia show that made her famous. And while the 45-year-old actor keeps in touch with many of her Sopranos castmates, Falco appears ready to reenter the world of full-time television with a new Showtime series called Nurse Jackie. The story of a take-no-shit Manhattan hospital employee struggling to balance work and a home life without sacrificing her sanity, it’s a nice departure for Falco. (“I love it,” she says of the character’s tough edge. “I think that’s among the things about her that appealed to me when I read the script.”) But we have to wonder how the lack of weekly whackings and guys communicating through effusive hand gestures will affect her attitude.

It must be nice to arrive at work every day and not have to worry about which of your coworkers is going to be rubbed out.
Well, I can’t say that that is true, first of all.

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In what is further evidence of our inability to separate Hollywood from reality, we were caught totally off guard when funny fellow Ed Helms, star of The Office and, more recently, The Hangover, called us up and wasn’t totally wasted. In fact, near as we could tell, he wasn’t drunk at all! Say it ain’t so, Ed.

You’re hungover right now, aren’t you?
No. I’m not, actually. I don’t get hungover very often. I actually don’t drink very often.

I heard that your costar Bradley Cooper doesn’t drink either. Seems outrageous, having a bunch of teetotalers in a movie called The Hangover.
I’m not sure I would call us a “bunch of teetotalers,” but yes, we are responsible adults who take our jobs seriously.

Read the rest of the interview after the break.

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How the times have changed. Karl Rove, once the ringmaster of the Republican Permanent Majority Circus, is now reduced to inconsequential jester. Just picture that unholy clown car for a second, would you? Rove, Cheney, Rummy and Satan all jammed into a tiny automobile that wouldn’t seat two leprechauns comfortably. Instant comedy classic. We spoke to Democratic strategist and Old School star James Carville about Lee Atwater’s protégé, and they will both be interviewed by Charlie Rose at Radio City Music Hall May 26. Some of our favorite Rove moments after the break.

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Just writing that headline made me remember something that I’d like to bring up before that particular wisp of thought hides from me in an asteroid belt that turns out to be some kind of giant space worm: What was the deal with the stormtroopers who shot Leia in A New Hope setting their blasters to “stun”? That particular setting was never again used in the succeeding movies, and it also had that weird ovoid beam. But they did hit her with the blast, which might have been the last thing these intergalactic Keystone cops in white ever managed to target correctly. Maybe there was more recoil or something when they set their laser guns to “kill.” So we asked Simon Pegg (who costars as Scotty in Star Trek, opening this Friday) who he thinks would win in a battle between the red-shirted Star Trek ensigns and the famously incompetent stormtroopers.

See his answer (and a short list of other famously ineffective onscreen armies) after the break.

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Hollywood actor Liev Schreiber is a man at home in both Shakespearean tragedy and big-budget comic-book summer blowouts. Naturally, when we spoke to him for the Hot Seat, the conversation often blurred the lines between the two. For example, Schreiber explains that Watchmen’s Rorschach is a better antihero than Hamlet, not because he survived prison and was into summary vigilante justice, but because “he has no face.” But, weirdly, he goes on to say that Othello’s antagonist Iago (”He just loves no man. He has no connection to anything”) is a way more evil villain than Dr. Doom, this despite Doom’s similar lack of a discernible mug. (We’re just asking for some consistancy). X-Men Origins: Wolverine opens tomorrow.

American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis is just like you or me—he puts his pants on one leg at a time in the morning, reads the paper, and now and again enjoys a good breakfast cereal. Below, we offer a glimpse into a day in the life, and pick his brain a little about the perils and rewards of adapting fiction for the big screen. The film based on his book The Informers opens tomorrow, and despite its lack of vampires, it appears to be quite good (read TONY’s four-star review here).

Time Out New York: How’s L.A.?
Bret Easton Ellis: It’s um…[Long silence] That’s a big question.

Okay. How was breakfast?
[Silence] Breakfast… Yeah, I had some shredded oats.

C’mon, you can do it.
But I just ate it out of the box.

Bold move.
I had a strange day. I ate cereal out of the box, and…this’ll sum up the answer to what L.A. is like. Today, I’m doing an interview on a film based on a book I wrote. And I’m doing these after I ate cereal out of the box. Then I’m going to the Hollywood Memorial Cemetery, because a scene in my new book takes place in it, and I kind of want to get a lay of the land. Then I’m meeting a friend and seeing Monsters vs. Aliens at the cinema. Sounds like a fine day. The usual difficulties keep dropping in, and you have to either duck them or deal with them.

More small talk with Bret after the break!

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It would be easy to write off Bernie Williams’s second album, Moving Forward, as just another product of an ex-athlete with too much time on his hands. Hell, Allen Iverson didn’t even wait until midcareer to unleash his trenchant raps upon an unsuspecting world back in 2000. Bernie, though, is an actual musician, and the track we really want to point your attention to (because we’re sadists) is his cover of that Jon Secada song, which Bernie records alongside the Cuban singer himself. (This song has been going through my head since around 1993.)

It’s just another dayyyyy. Whoooaaaa… Oh, sorry. Got caught up in those Latin rhythms. Anyway, while on the subject of musical endeavors by athletes, anyone else ever wonder what happened to all those ballers featured in Hammer’s “2 Legit” video? Eh? [Via Deadspin]

Neko Case, when she’s not busy with her full-time gig of totally kicking ass, is the proud practitioner of an odd hobby—rescuing free pianos offered up on Craigslist. In a strange coincidence, I just happen to have a neglected piano in my apartment that I’m desperately trying to get rid of. So, in an exchange over the phone a few weeks ago, shameless old me half-jokingly tried to pawn it off on her.

How’s Vermont?
I’m actually in Tucson right now. The place in Vermont is being renovated. I haven’t really moved in there yet.

Is that where all of these cast-off pianos of yours are housed?
Yes, that’s where they live. Where they’re currently stabled.

As luck would have it, my roommates and I are trying to get rid of one…

See her surprising response after the break. Read more »

Although he plays the unlovable English tyrant (but with zazz!) on Showtime’s The Tudors, Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers doesn’t think much of Henry VIII as a role model (although he does think the world of Wal-Mart denizens. See it all here). In the spirit of the day, we took an impromptu poll asking some local experts (i.e., people we know from around the office. Only the best of the best for you guys) for “worst leader in human history” nominations. Former TONY Web editor and armchair historian Dustin “Old Ironsides” Goot had this to say:

“How about our New York man, Henry Hudson? He traveled in circles along the Hudson Bay, insisting he’d find the Northwest passage. Until his men mutinied and killed him. That’s shitty leadership.”

Bravo, Dustin. You’re making your fourth-grade history teacher proud. See other nominations after the break! Read more »

We spoke with Adventureland star and SNL personality Bill Hader this week, and as we suspected, he is a man who appreciates the subtleties of ruining a movie for a bunch of brain-dead sorority banshees. But his calculated bean-spillage of Leo’s watery fate got us to wondering: What are the five most ambiguous deaths in film history? Were they really dead, or just playacting?

(1) Shane (Shane): Alan Ladd took a gut shot in the final fight, but the code of the West forbade him from showing weakness in front of the boy, lest the child grow up to be a frightened milksop. Wilson was fast on the draw. But a man has to be what he is. Which is dead. Verdict: Dead

See us resolve some other tricky demises after the break. Read more »

Keira Knightley has made a new fan. The British A-lister and star of The Edge of Love, when we spoke over the phone a few weeks ago, handled my dumb questions with charm and aplomb. She also impressed me with her adorable British colloquialisms (she used the word gooseberry!). We discussed her role in the film (penned by her mother) and also the fact that it’s her first part that requires singing. This line of questioning led to a memorable exchange:

See, I was picturing you practicing singing by an open window and all of these adorable forest creatures flocking your way, not unlike Snow White.
Wow, in London?

Sure.
No, I think we’ve probably killed off all our adorable forest creatures or anything like that.

No squirrels?
No, not even squirrels. [Laughs]

I don’t know (nor care!) what resolutely highbrow TONY film guy Dave Fear thinks about Rush-infused bromance vehicle I Love You, Man (any film with a dog in it named Anwar Sadat is fine by me). In any case, we spoke to the delightful Jason Segel a while back for the Hot Seat, and—as one page is far too little to contain a man of his tremendous stature—we’re now hitting you with some juicy excerpts that didn’t make print.

Jason Segel on the real-life implications of topics broached in his latest film:
Oh, absolutely, there are real-life implications. Our whole group of male friends is really close. It gets a little weird occasionally. An actor’s lifestyle is so different, you know what I mean? For example, I’m going to London for six months starting next month, so it’s kind of weird to try and live a normal life and maintain a relationship and all that stuff. Actors are a good ten years behind the rest of our peers. I’m looking forward to my thirties. I think I’m going to hit my stride in my thirties.

Yeah?
Yeah. Then I’ll finally be able to play a doctor, you know?

So your buddy has to go all through med school, but you can just play one on TV?
Yeah, exactly. With no training. I can just spout out nonsense. I need 50 cc’s of Ninhydrin!

See other parts of this hard-hitting interview after the break!
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Currently, actor Keith David’s distinctive voice can be heard in his role as the heroic cat in the 3-D adaptation Coraline. But the role he’s best known for (at least in our mind) is that of the skeptical pugilist in John Carpenter’s They Live. It’s more or less the greatest fight we’ve ever seen (and yes, that includes the time when Rocky defeated Communism). We recently spoke with David and asked him  what he considered the best scrapes ever.

(1) “Of course I like the They Live fight, but there were a couple of fights in Road House that were cut, that you wouldn’t have seen. But right after we finished shooting it, the director called me up and said, ‘Keith, I’ve got three hours and 15 minutes worth of film that I have to cut down to two hours,’ so he said it had to go. I had a great fight with Terry Funk.”

See the other four after the break!

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