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J.K. Simmons: That Guy From That Thing (Who You Definitely Know)

Evan Rachel Wood and J.K. Simmons in ‘Barefoot.’ (Roadside Attractions)

You know you’re a character actor when the best remembered of your hundreds or roles features you in fake teeth and a giant wig.

Either that or you’re simply known as the Farmers Insurance guy.

Such is the fate of J.K. Simmons (short for Jonathan Kimble), a man whose name might not come to mind right away, but whose face you’ll recognize immediately from hundreds of roles in films and TV shows, including as J. Jonah Jameson in Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” trilogy.

Because his is a name every film fan deserves to know, we asked Simmons to be the next “that guy” in our series of conversation’s with the screen’s great character actors. Simmons phoned in from his home in Los Angeles to talk  acting, “Spider-man,” “Juno,” “Oz,” “Law & Order,” “The Gift,” “Burn After Reading,” and his most recent offering, “Barefoot,” an off-beat romantic comedy starring Evan Rachel Wood and Scott Speedman, which debuts on Blu-ray this week.

[Related: ‘Barefoot’ and Awesome: Evan Rachel Wood Gives Good POPsessions]

Do you consider yourself a character actor?
JKS:
Yeah, you know what? I think people have a different perception of what character actor means. I think, generally, it means you’re not that good looking. So, yeah. I would definitely consider myself a character actor.

How many parts would you say you’ve had?
JKS:
Well, I don’t know. If you include everything, it would definitely be a few hundred. If you’re talking including all the theatre I did for 20 years, and animated jobs, and this and that, it’s got to be 300 plus.

Can most people place you when they see you?
JKS:
Yeah. Now they can, mostly. Not always, certainly. I remember being sort of vaguely recognized for years, and people think that they maybe went to high school with me or something.  I actually remember where I was standing – because it was right outside my building in New York –   the first time some guy walked up to me and went, “Hey, are you J.K. Simmons?” And I went, “Yeah. Do you have a summons for me?”

Has anybody ever said to you, “Hey, you’re that guy from that thing?”
JKS: Oh yeah. Yeah. Definitely. “You’re that guy.” Yeah. Yeah. I’ve had those exact words spoken to me on multiple occasions. Yeah, and variations on that. Yeah. 


J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson in 'Spider-Man 2.' (Columbia Pictures)
J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson in 'Spider-Man 2.' (Columbia Pictures)

J.K. Simmons in ‘Spider-Man 2.’ (Columbia Pictures)

What do people most recognize you for?
JKS: That varies a lot, but the top few would be “Juno” and the “Spider-Man” movies, and then the TV shows “Oz,” “Law & Order,” “The Closer,” and now, a lot of “Growing Up Fisher," a new show on NBC, and then increasingly, it’s "Bomp badomp bomp, bomp-bomp-bomp"… people singing the Farmers theme and calling it State Farm. I think more people are going to end up seeing those commercials than everything else I’ve ever done put together.

How does that make you feel?
JKS: Well, it’s a little sobering. I mean, 20 years ago, I was dying to get a commercial and pay the rent, and then once I had some money in the bank, I poo-pooed the idea of commercials, and then four years ago or so, when they came to us with this idea, I thought it was a fun campaign and a character, as opposed to a pitchman. Although, it kind of serves both purposes, obviously.

Shortly after the spot started airing, three and a half years ago, I was at a lunch with Eamonn Walker, who was a pal from the “Oz” days, and we tended to get stares wherever we went anyway, because it was the head of the Aryan Brotherhood having lunch with the head of the Black Muslims. And we got recognized by these two little old ladies, but it was one of those things where they weren’t sure… ”Where do I know you from?” And then one of them had this glow of recognition, this light bulb moment, and she turned to her friend… and she taps her friend on the shoulder. “Oh, I know. You’re a commercial actor!” And Eamonn looks at me like you asked for it, and I was like, “Yes. Yes, indeed. I am. I am a commercial actor.”

[Related: Clancy Brown: That Guy From That Thing (Who You Definitely Know)]

Who was the first big star you shared a scene with?
JKS:
Probably Sidney Poitier, and that was momentous for me. It was a move called “The Jackal,” and it was Sidney, and Richard Gere, and Bruce Willis, although the only time I worked with Bruce was the scene where he shot me in the head. The first grown-up movie that my parents ever took me to was “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” and my mom had had a crush on Sidney Poitier since I was a little kid.

The character I played was sort of attached to his hip the whole movie. I worked for four months on this movie and probably have four lines in it, but he was everything I could’ve hoped for and more, in terms of just being an awesome guy, and a mentor, and just a generous actor, and a generous guy.

Do you remember that first scene you shared with him?
JKS:
We we’re shooting in a prison yard up in Quebec, and we’re walking to where they had the cast chairs set up, and I see the little director chairs with our names, and I see Richard Gere, Diane Venora, Sidney Poitier, J.K. Simmons. Those were the names on the chairs, and I tapped one of the wardrobe guys, and I said, “Take a picture of my chair and Sidney’s chair, and I’m sending that to my mom,” and that lived on the refrigerator for however many years that is now… Going on…I don’t know, seventeen, eighteen years ago.

One of your most fun characters is J. Jonah Jameson. Was there a scene that you had to retake because people were laughing at your character too much?

JKS: We definitely had to do some retakes because we were laughing at our own antics sometimes, and a lot of that movie, we did kind of make up on the fly. Sam [Raimi] allowed us a lot of room to get out fun and come up with our own things.

There’s one… because I wore fake teeth as J. Jonah Jameson, because one of the things that I wanted to take right off the page of the comics was you always see him with this giant grimace with this mouth full of white, straight teeth. And so we had a scene where Spider-Man has come and stolen back the Spider-Man uniform/costume/whatever that I had hung on my wall, and I say, “He’s a thief!”

But every time I said thief, my fake teeth would come flying out of my mouth, about four takes in a row. Like, the first time was funny. The second time was funnier. The third time, it started getting a little bit old, and the fourth time was like, “Oh my God. Can we please?” And I said, “Screw it. I’m going to call him a crook instead of a thief.”

What about Juno? Do people wish you would get married to Allison Janney?
JKS:
Yeah. Oh yeah. Absolutely. That was Jason Reitman’s second movie, and he didn’t have much in the way of clout yet. The investors were clamoring for him to get big names to play Juno and to play the stepmom, Allison’s part, and my part. And Jason said when he first read that script, he knew that he wanted Allison. He knew he wanted me. He knew he wanted Ellen [Page]. He knew he wanted Michael Cera. All these actors who, at the time were…you know, Allison and I certainly had been around a little bit and had some…a track record, but we’re not going to carry a movie on our star names. And he went to bat for us from the very beginning.

[Related: Clint Howard: That Guy From That Thing (Who You Definitely Know)]

Did you guys have a sense, when you were shooting, how big “Juno” would get?
JKS:
I knew when Jason handed me the script and because he’s just a brat, he handed it to me, and he said, “Oh, you got to read this. It’s really good.” He didn’t say, “I want you to play Mac MacGuff.” He just said, “You got to read this. It’s really good,” and we were in a poker game, actually.

And I go home, and I’m reading it the next day, and I immediately fell in love with the part of Mac, and I go: but there’s no way… he’s going to want me to play the guy in the drugstore or some little bit part or something. And I fell in love with that part and called him, and I was just kind of hemming and hawing about, “Oh, it’s such a great script, and it’s going to be a wonderful movie, and blah blah blah blah, and this and that,” and he finally said, “Okay, I want you to play Juno’s dad. You’re playing Mac,” and I was just blown away. So all I knew was it was going to be a special experience for those of us who were lucky enough to be a part of it, and I knew it was going to be a really good movie. The fact that it actually blew up and got all the attention it got and that half the globe actually ended up seeing it, was icing on the cake.


J.K. Simmons in ‘Burn After Reading.’ (Everett Collections)

What do you remember about that chair that you sat in for a couple of days during the Coen brothers’s “Burn After Reading”?
JKS:
Yeah, that was exactly it: it was a couple of days. That’s the most bang for the buck I’ve ever had, because that’s one of the movies that people stop me for all the time, and I’m like, “Dude, I literally worked a Friday and a Monday on that movie.” It’s two scenes, and the movie is so well structured and so well crafted, as everything those guys do is.

There’s a long, long, long story about… there were like, three other parts that I almost was going to do in that movie that they kept saying, “No. That’s just not quite right.” And then when they asked me to play that part, I reread the script, and I thought, “This is the best part in the movie.” Because that last scene that David Rasche and I have, all the ridiculousness with all the other actors, Brad [Pitt], and George [Clooney], and John [Malkovich], all the other actors have been doing, we get to sort of cash it in and pay it off, and those scenes were a real treat.


Marlon Wayans and J.K. Simmons in 'The Ladykillers.' (Touchstone Pictures)
Marlon Wayans and J.K. Simmons in 'The Ladykillers.' (Touchstone Pictures)

Marlon Wayans and J.K. Simmons in ‘The Ladykillers.’ (Touchstone Pictures)

On Kevin Pollack’s Internet show you mentioned that you were successful in changing one Coen brothers word?
JKS: You work with a vast array of directors in this business, if you’re lucky enough to work, and working with a guy like Sam Raimi, who loves to encourage ad-libbing, and improvising, and everybody bringing their own thing to the game…and once you have a sort of level of trust with him, I was given the leeway because I happened to be a baseball guy and I know the game. He gave us a lot of leeway to just make stuff up.

So that was kind of the rhythm I was used to, and the first time I worked with the Coens on “The Ladykillers,” it was like: They write what they write, and they hear it, I mean, they handle every detail of everything. From the instruction of the story to the final edit, and they’re geniuses, and they know exactly what they want. So I would find myself… you know, a little bitty paraphrase. Not really improvising, but just improvisation, we call it sometimes, where I’d just slightly paraphrase something, and the script supervisor would come over and say, “You know, no. It’s not…it’s…”

And I kept thinking, “One of these days, they’re going to see that my idea is even better than theirs.” It’s not happening. Every time I’d do anything a little bit different, they go, “No. No. That’s not quite it, J.K.,” and then one day they were shooting the scene where I’d had my thumb blown off, and the old lady’s cat takes it in his mouth and runs away, and we’re all chasing the cat, and the line was, “And then I lost my thumb, and I mean literally lost it because of that g—damn cat.” That was what was written, and I just decided that it was going to be a much better line if I said, “And literally lost it because of that f—-ing cat,” and I said that in rehearsal, and Joel and Ethan come walking over to to me a second later, and they go, “That’s good. That’s funny. Do that.” It was like, the biggest pat on the back I could’ve ever gotten. I got to change one obscenity to another.

J.K. Simmons in ‘The Gift.’ (Everett Collections)

What do you remember about “The Gift”? What was that shoot like?
JKS:
Well, that was great for a lot of reasons. Actually, my second movie in a row with Sam… and really “For Love of the Game,” in a lot of ways, was a pivotal movie for me. First of all, my first son was born. My first child, my son, was born during that shoot. So that makes it a momentous occasion right there, but it was a baseball movie about my hometown team with Sam Raimi, who, obviously is one of the great directors, and also a Tigers fan, by the way. And then…yeah, Sam’s next movie, I get the call, and they didn’t even ask me to audition for it, which was very unusual at the time for me, to just get an offer to play a nice part in a movie. It had that similar kind of sense of being on a team that all the best movies do when you’re working with Jason Reitman, or a Sam Raimi, or the Coen brothers. And great actors. Talk about an interesting, talented cast of people, and some people getting to do different things that they hadn’t done before.

It was during that shoot that word got around that Sam was going to be directing the Spider-Man movie, and I started getting phone calls from friends saying, “You got to ask Sam. You should be in that movie. You should play the bad guy. You should play Doc Ock.” Which I think they were thinking of just because Doc Ock was bald in the comics. And I’ve never been one to work pretty hard at pimping myself, so I’m not going to approach Sam on the set and go, “Hey, how about putting me in your next movie too?” But when the time came, he wanted me to do it, and I had to go read for the producers and everything. But obviously, the rest is history. I put on the flattop and we went from there.

J.K. Simmons in 'Oz.' (Everett Collection)
J.K. Simmons in 'Oz.' (Everett Collection)

J.K. Simmons in ‘Oz.’ (Everett Collections)

What about when you were offered the role on Oz? Were you hesitant to take the part of a white supremacist?
JKS:
I was. I actually was, and it was ridiculous, in a way, because I had very little television experience.

They didn’t have a script really. He had a bunch of scenes written out, and he (creator Tom Fontana) just had sort of ideas of who all these characters were. I actually almost talked my way out of it because by the time I started doing TV and film, I’d been around, and I knew the kind of impact that playing a part like that had. I mean, even just my one little guest spot on “Homicide,” which was not a top 10 show, I was getting stopped on the street more than I had doing five Broadway shows in a row. So I knew the impact it would have, and I knew that I would run the risk of having to fight being typecast as the Nazi bastard for the rest of my career, and I knew the show was going to be really good and something I wanted to be a part of, but I was worried about it.

Tom kind of pumped me full of sunshine a little bit about how the character is going to be when we first meet him, we’re going to think he’s a good guy, and our Everyman character, and maybe he’s going to be a mentor. And he said, “It’s not till down the road that we’re going to really find out that you’re basically the devil.” Of course, down the road turned out to be Act 2 of the first episode by the time I’ve got Beecher naked in my cell and branding him.

But obviously, it worked out pretty well, and then one of the many gigantic, lucky breaks in my career happened. Not only am I on “Oz,” which is groundbreaking, the first big drama on HBO, and from Tom Fontana, one of the great creative minds in TV, and a great cast of New York actors. Well, right after “Oz” debuted, I get the call to play the shrink on “Law & Order” as a recurring character, and right away, I just stumbled into the perfect counterbalance to play Vern Schillinger, the psycho, and then play the psychiatrist, Dr. Skoda on “Law & Order.” People were seeing both things, and that was really huge in the perception of me, both in the public eye and in the business, with the people who were doing the hiring.

[Related: Jon Polito: That Guy From That Thing (Who You Definitely Know)]

What was the most fun part about shooting “Barefoot”?
JKS:
The thing that really appealed to me about “Barefoot,” in particular, was people can look at it and say, “Oh, it’s a romantic comedy,” but to me, it really does a nice job of living on that line between indie vibe and big romantic comedy vibe, and it’s just really smart writing, and Scott [Speedman] and Evan [Rachel Wood] are really wonderful in it. You know, the fun scenes there were when I got to give Scott Speedman a hard time, because Scott’s just one of those guys that you want to give a hard time to: The handsome, good-looking, young smartass.

But just in general, that movie, like most of the work I’ve been lucky enough to do for the past many years, it’s always fun playing scenes that are well written, and then with good actors, it’s even more fun.

Come back to Yahoo Movies on Thursday to see all the stars arrive for the live “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” red carpet premiere at 6 p.m. ET/3 p.m. PT.