Jonah Hill: I Owe Oscar Nomination to Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow

Truth rating: 10

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James Franco interviews his pal Jonah Hill for Playboy, and the two discuss how Hill rose from obscurity to the comedy elite.

“I went to the University of Colorado for a semester and got kicked out because I never went to class,” explains the Moneyball star. “My mom still wears her Boulder sweatshirt. She’ll send me a picture and say, ‘It’s my $40,000 sweatshirt.’”

Hill eventually wound up at school in New York, but dropped out shortly after landing his first part in I Heart Huckabees, “because I thought I was going to blow up, but I couldn’t get work for two years. My agents wouldn’t let me tell anyone they were my agents. My parents were terrified.”

What changed?

“Meeting Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen was the tipping point,” says Hill, who calls his half day on The 40 Year Old Virgin “the defining day of my career.”

Hill became a huge star with Superbad — and things were never the same.

He explains, “I lived in this small apartment in Los Angeles, where I mostly played video games with my friends, and suddenly there was a billboard for Superbad above my apartment. Nobody knows who I am one day, then suddenly every single person knows who I am. You think everything will be that amazing, but it’s not like that.”

The actor says he owes everything to Apatow, Rogen, and their collaborator Evan Goldberg.

“I wouldn’t have been nominated for an Oscar or starred in a [Martin] Scorsese movie if it wasn’t for what Seth, Evan and Judd did for me,” says Hill, adding, “If those guys need me, I’m there. They’ve been there for me as people. I support them in whatever they do. They are just guys who work hard, have so much talent and are good people, and that’s rare.”

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