Episode Report Card 4 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT "I Really Appreciate What You Guys Do"
By Couch Baron | Season 2 | Episode 10 | Aired on 01.10.2006
CB: You mentioned your wife, Lauren. You've been married since about 2004, much to the chagrin of some of the forum posters. Tell me a little about her. JD: She's so cool! She's about 5'1", a [laughs] small person. I don't know, man -- we're just really good friends. She's actually a painter, and she's very good. I don't even have to PR her, because her work is just so good. It speaks for itself. CB: How did you two meet? JD: In school, actually, at Delphi Academy. We were friends for about two years before we actually started dating, and we got married five years to the day after that. CB: Now, you have a reputation for being pretty serious about the craft of acting. JD: Dude, yeah. CB: How do people get that impression? What is it that you're giving off? JD: Dude, I don't know. There's a running joke -- as soon as I hear "Cut!" the first thing out of my mouth is "Fuck!" "Print it!" "FUCK!" It's just like -- I don't know, man. What I was happiest with -- the work on Veronica Mars that I liked best -- was the pilot. I don't know, just, like, the little tiny moments, like driving up in the car, and Veronica didn't look at me, and I'm like, "Hey! Hey!" and she looked at me, and my attention was totally on her. I was just so there -- I felt quite secure at that time that everything out of my mouth would have been character-driven, in a way. A couple of things I did were embellishments of what was in the script. CB: You felt really in the moment. JD: Yeah. It was so freeing. It was wonderful. CB: So you'd describe yourself as pretty serious on set. JD: Yeah, I'd probably say so. It works as an advantage and a disadvantage at the same time. It's good to be attentive and always looking for more stuff, but then you can get overly serious where you don't let things flow freely. CB: What do you do to keep improving as an actor? JD: I just try keeping an eye open for new stuff, listening, watching movies. A lot of movies, you can see all the clichés that people talk about, but then you watch a fucking Brando movie or you watch Montgomery Clift, these guys were so attentive to moments that you see in everyday life with dialogue, you see what they act and then you think of what that would have been on the page, and you go, "How did he get that?" Clift, especially, broke up speech in different rhythms, and you see that in life, man! People don't complete a thought so often, and it's awesome! I love that stuff. It's really exciting to me. So you can learn from that.