J.K. Simmons: A real character

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Like so many New Yorkers, Jonathan Kimble Simmons was born elsewhere, but this is home. And like so many New York actors, J.K. Simmons once waited tables at the legendary restaurant Joe Allen.

Was he a good waiter? “You know what? Not very good,” he said. “I worked hard. I was pleasant, you know. I tried to be charming. I was not organized. This would have taken me, like, five trips to set up [this table], yeah. And the butter would already be melting by the time I got it here.”

Simmons, who’s a far better actor than waiter, stars in “The Westies,” a new series out next week on MGM+. It’s about the Irish-American mobsters who ruled the West Side of New York in the 1980s. Simmons plays the boss, who is tough, smart, and bad to the bone.

How comfortable is he playing that kind of bad guy? “I just love going back and forth and doing something different from whatever I just got done doing,” he said. “And if there’s something I can latch onto other than just pure evil, you know, if I can find the humanity in the guy somewhere, then, yeah, I love playing those kind of guys.”

To watch a trailer for “The Westies” click on the video player below:

Simmons spent years playing “those kind of guys,” and more, like the bombastic boss in the “Spider-man” series, and the guy in those Farmers Insurance ads. At 71, he says that for most of his career he played characters older than he actually is, and – as a married father of two – that carried into real life. “We didn’t get married until I was 41, and Joe was born when I was 43,” he said. “I would, you know, have him in the Baby Bjorn or whatever at the grocery store when he was, like, six months or whatever, and the checkout lady would say, ‘Oh, you’ve got the grandson today.’ Like, and I’d go …. ‘Sure.'”

He wasn’t necessarily grandfatherly in 2015’s “Whiplash,” playing the brutal band leader opposite Miles Teller. The film was shot in only 19 days, and Simmons says it was intense – but only when the cameras were rolling. In-between takes, they were, he says, “Total idiots. You know, talking sports and giving each other hard time. Miles was just being Miles, and me being my dumb-ass self.”

He was also brilliant, earning an Academy Award for his performance – and maybe should’ve won another for best acceptance speech: “Call your mom, call your dad. If you’re lucky enough to have a parent or two alive on this planet, call ’em. Don’t text, don’t email. Call them on the phone, tell them you love them, and thank them, and listen to them for as long as they want to talk to you. Thank you. Thank you, Mom and Dad.”

He says people have thanked him for that: “I heard so many stories of, like, people who were estranged and because some, you know, random bald White guy on a stage said ‘Call your mom,’ they called their mom or they called their dad. Like, really dramatic stories of reconciliations because I’d said that.”

That Oscar was a long time coming. In a 50-year career, J.K. Simmons has created more than 200 characters on stage and screen, from a singing guy in “Guys and Dolls,” to a shredded Santa Claus with Dwayne Johnson in “Red One.” But it seems like the biggest challenge of his career was just surviving back in the day, in 1980s New York, when he was young, talented … and starving.

It was when he was living in sketchy apartments: “I mean, you know, not unsafe!” he said. “But, you know, yeah, roaches, rodents. It was New York City on a budget.”

And he might have given up, were it not for another acting pal, Gregg Edelman. “Like, I couldn’t get a waiter job,” Simmons recalled, getting emotional. “And I was going broke. And we’re just hanging out, talking. You know, maybe watching a game or whatever we did. And he left. And the next morning when I got up … I saw he left me 100 bucks, which I needed!”

Forty years on, it still means everything.

Now, Simmons has his pick of projects, including the film “Heart of the Beast,” out in September. He co-stars with Brad Pitt, playing, as he put it, “A character who he bumps into. A character in every sense of that word!”

Does Simmons like the term “character actor”? “Yeah,” he said. “You know what? I mean, to me, that’s always just been like an actor who’s, like, not super-handsome. That’s basically what that means.”

J.K. Simmons has spent a career showing us what a character can be, and he has plenty more to do: “It’s crazy to think back on, you know, the nervous guy at the Bigfork Summer Playhouse, being such a terrible actor, and starting to learn how to channel what’s in here [holding his heart] more intelligently. And I’m grateful every day, and trying to enjoy, you know, all of it.”

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Watch an extended interview with J.K. Simmons (Video)

To watch a trailer for “Heart of the Beast,” click on the video player below:

For more info:

• “The Westies” debuts July 12 on MGM+
• “Heart of the Beast” opens in theaters Sept. 25
• “The Brink of War” opens in theaters Aug. 14
• Thanks to Joe Allen Restaurant, New York City

     
Story produced by John D’Amelio. Editor: Steven Tyler.