There was a best-selling book in the late '60s and '70s called 'The Adventurers' by Harold Robbins. The lead character's name was Dax. Anyone that's roughly my age that's named Dax is named from that book.
I think all males from Detroit have an obsession with cars.
I lived for going down the rabbit hole of meeting weird people. Of course, come Monday I would be tallying up all the different situations, and each one was progressively more dangerous. I got lucky in that I didn't go to jail.
We were doing press for this movie that my friends and I made for $5,000 called 'Brothers Justice,' that I also wrote and directed. And during the press of that, people kept saying, 'What's next, what's next?' And my best friend Nate and I - Nate produced it - we kept saying, 'Oh, we're gonna do a car-chase movie next.'
I've learnt that I've had the best results from just trying to be me, trying to make a movie or TV show I want to see or write a script I want to read, and that's really all I can offer - being authentic.
I've had plenty of crappy jobs, but the only job I've ever really dedicated myself to has been acting. It's my life.
They're making so few movies that you really just have to make it. It's going to be the only way you end up getting work. I don't believe anyone's going to really go out on a limb and just throw millions of dollars on someone that's not been proven. They're going to have to show somebody something at some point.
All of my free time is made up of motor sports endeavors, be them motorcycles or off-road racing or track days. I just love anything with an engine. That is one of my main loves. Obviously, my other well-known love is Kristen Bell.
The reason I'm drawn to it is - both the off road racing and the motorcycles on the track - it takes a lot for me to quiet my brain and anything that requires 100% of my attention and focus I find very soothing and that is the closest I get to being content.
I was 20 when I moved to Los Angeles. I went on probably 600 commercial auditions and couldn't book any of them.
I'm an off-road racecar driver. And I think every woman in my life has told me that's not a sensible hobby. But when I was growing, even more than I wanted to be funny, I wanted to be a racecar driver. That's all I thought about. I worked for a race team when I was 15 and I traveled with them.
Being truthful is a necessity because when I'm not being truthful it takes a toll on me. I don't have any room for it in my life. I don't have an across-the-board opinion on honesty in relationships. But for me, personally, it's paramount.
You know what? I did a lot of things that were deliberate, and they all backfired. I was trying desperately to become Will Ferrell or Adam Sandler, and it did not work for me. I took a lot of leaps that I shouldn't have, traditionally speaking. I paid the price for that. I was not as hire-able for a while. But then I just gave all that up.
I was brought home to a trailer in Highland, MI.
It's ironic, really. Guys should be excited that I got Kristen Bell. If Brad Pitt gets Kristen Bell, it's like, 'Well, of course he did.' With me, it should be, 'Oh good, a normal-looking guy got her. Maybe I'll get me a Kristen Bell.' But guys hate my guts for always dating women I have no right to be with.
What's great about TV, and what I love about being on 'Parenthood,' is you have this family. I'm now going on four years of working with the same 100 people, and that helps you feel like your life has more roots. It's more conducive to having a family, and you're staying in town. So that part is amazing.
I believe in making movies very inexpensively; I think that way too much money is spent on making movies. Enough movies are being made, but not enough experimental ones.
I'm a writer; I've worked as much as a writer as I have as an actor, so I was in a script-note session at Imagine for a TV show I wrote that they were producing, and they happened to say, 'You'd be great as Crosby, do you want to do this show we're doing, 'Parenthood?'
There's like a shift in the paradigm about every 15 years in movies because one would slip through the cracks. I think if they were more inexpensive you would see many more eclectic comedies being made.
Now, where does my comedy come from, like, as a human being? Yeah, when I was a kid I was dyslexic and had to go to special-ed every day and felt stupid about that and got very witty to defend myself.
