Ben Feldman tackles romantic role in A to Z. By Luaine Lee
If NBC execs were seeking a romantic leading man for their new rom-com, A to Z, they didn’t find him. They found Ben Feldman instead.
Feldman, whom many of us remember as Michael Ginsberg, the creative copywriter on Mad Men who goes bonkers, admits he’s no Romeo.
“I was never interested in marriage. I thought it was a ridiculous, antiquated thing and I still, to a degree do. But you do it anyway,” he says raising his hands in the air, palms backward.
“When I still thought marriage was ridiculous but stopped caring that I thought that, was when I thought, ‘Oh, I’m an adult now.’”
He became an “adult” less than a year ago when he married interior designer Michelle Mulitz. Of course, it was contrary to everything that Feldman thought he believed.
“My stepmother would call me all the time and say, ‘So-and-so’s daughter is an actress, she’s moving to Los Angeles. Please take her out.’ I would always ignore those because it’s embarrassing to call somebody and say, ‘Hey, my mom gave me your number,’” he says in the lobby of a hotel here in Pasadena, California.
“One day it happened to be this girl, and I said, ‘Just e-mail the information. I’m not going to call her.’ She e-mailed this whole thing saying, ‘Please take her out. If it sucks, I’ll owe you one. She comes from a great family, blah, blah, blah.’
“So I clicked ‘forward’ and forwarded that e-mail to this girl I’d never met before thinking if she’s cool, she’ll appreciate how funny that is. And she did. And that was eight years ago.”
Still he was reluctant. “We went out that night to some cheesy party in the Valley. I thought, ‘She’s great, she’s beautiful and cool and fun, but I was in no way shape or form in a place (to date her). It was certainly NOT a romantic movie moment where music swelled and the camera swirled. I was just like, ‘There’s no way this is going to work out. I met her through my step-mom!’ I thought, ‘She can come with me and my friends to this party, but that’s IT. No wining and dining.’ It was a keg party. We’ve been basically together ever since.”
He says he was slow to weaken. “About seven years into it,” he confesses. “I fight commitment big time. We started dating and almost reluctantly, that too. I’d come out of a relationship not that long before. I was in my 20s and was uninterested in dates. But I grew up, and we got married last October.”
That goes to prove that actors don’t have to live what they act. Though he does fess up to one grand, romantic gesture. He told his wife he was taking her to Asia and Africa in one evening. He drove her to San Diego where they visited the Wild Animal Park (Africa), followed by dinner at an Indian restaurant (Asia). He earned points for imagination.
He also exercises his imagination in acting and Feldman says there’s no way he could be anything but an actor. “I’m just not smart enough. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a painter. I liked doing funny voices and pretending. That’s pretty much it. At the end of my life, I’ll be able to look back and say, ‘I’ve been thousands of people rather than just one.’ And that’s exciting to me.”
In A to Z, which premieres on October 2, Feldman plays a guy’s guy who works for an online dating company, secretly believes in fate, and is waiting for the Right One to come along. He meets Zelda, a pragmatic lawyer who insists on orchestrating her life. E-harmony it’s not.
As for Feldman, 34, he may be a converted newlywed, but he’s semi-handy around the house. “I can fix things,” he insists, “but not without a lot of complaining and massive celebration afterwards. Like showing my wife over and over again: ‘I did that.’ ‘I built that.’ ‘That was ME.’ And I’ll do that for like a week. I’m capable of doing it, I just complain all the way through. I think that’s the Jewish upbringing.”
He hasn’t held down any job other than acting since he was in college. “I worked in restaurants all throughout college — for me it was really fun being a waiter — I just assumed I’d be doing that for the next 10 years.”
But he didn’t. He underwent two days’ training at a restaurant in New York, only to be cast the first day in a Broadway show. By the second day he already knew he’d not be asking customers how they wanted their steaks or memorising the dessert cart.
“It’s surreal how lucky I’ve been,” he sighs.
“And I have to remind myself when I complain about stupid things. There’s a lot of times where I’ll think, like, if I’m on a plane and it gets bumpy, I get nervous. But now I can say, ‘If the plane goes down now, it was worth it. It was a great life.’” – MCT
DiCaprio bags green award
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio rocked a fuller-than-ever beard and a slicked-back man bun look as he accepted his Clinton Global Citizen Award for his environmental work. DiCaprio was presented the award by World Wildlife Fund CEO Carter Roberts, reports usmagazine.com.
The Titanic star urged the public to keep environmental concerns in their minds. “Climate change is compromising the very livability of our planet,” he said. “Less than 3% of all philanthropic giving goes toward protecting and preserving our environment,” he explained, before urging people “to put environmental issues at the forefront of the human agenda.”
Earlier in the day, the actor participated in the People’s Climate Change march, alongside fellow environmental activists Edward Norton, Mark Ruffalo, Sting and Evangeline Lilly. Eva Longoria, Seth Meyers, Randy Jackson and Chelsea Clinton also attended the award ceremony. — IANS
Greece wedding for Kelly Brook?
Actress-model Kelly Brook and fiance David McIntosh are reportedly eyeing a wedding in Greece. According to The Sun newspaper, the rumours of a Greek wedding went haywire after Brook and McIntosh were spotted viewing some potential wedding venues in Mykonos last week, reports femalefirst.co.uk. “Mykonos is one of the most romantic islands in the world. They could not have thought of anywhere better to get married in,” a source said. The duo got engaged in March after just a month of dating. — IANS