My Chubby Valentine

In one’s own mind, it’s practically impossible to separate David Schwimmer from his TV alter ego Ross Gellar, the stuttering palaeontologist who finally found bliss with Jennifer Aniston after ten seasons worth of wooing in Friends.

In person, the 40-year-old actor may be significantly less dweebish than his most famous onscreen incarnation but the similarities are striking.
Like Ross, his speech is characterised by a winningly comic hesitancy and, even more like Ross, he strikes you as the sort of nice polite Jewish boy your mother would be thrilled with.
“Well, I am from a nice Jewish family”, he smiles.
His parents, both successful lawyers practising in New York and later, after swapping coasts while David was still a toddler, in Los Angeles, were understandably less than thrilled when their offspring announced his desire to tread the boards.
“Oh God”, he says. “Okay, it was only out of love and concern but they wanted me to have a profession. It’s obviously a big Jewish tradition as well – you grow up, you go to school, you become a doctor or lawyer. There was a lot of emphasis on education in my house. But my parents knew I had been bitten by the acting bug so they said ‘fine, as long as you get a university degree’. And that was cool. They were very aware that most actors don’t make it. So I got a degree, I set up a theatre company and then I waited tables for seven years. They were psyched. You can imagine.”
Oh well. It all worked out for the best. Between shifts as a bus boy he managed to hang in there with occasional jobs on TV (including The Wonder Years and NYPD Blue) and bit parts in movies (Wolf, Twenty Bucks). Imagine his surprise when Friends put this barely jobbing actor right at the centre of the cultural universe.
“It was amazing and heady and surreal”, he recalls. “There was a moment in time when it felt like the show was the hottest thing out there. We had people like Susan Sarandon, Isabella Rossellini, Bruce Willis, Sean Penn, Brad Pitt and all of these people showing up for this sitcom. So yeah, there was a moment when Friends was the bomb. But in time that fades, you know?”
Mr. Schwimmer, however, is determined not to fade alongside his adventures in and around Central Perk. In the four years since the cast of Friends took their final bow, he has not stopped working, appearing as himself on Curb Your Enthusiasm, voicing a weedy giraffe in Madagascar and essaying the tyrannical Herbert Sobel in Band Of Brothers.
“When you’re doing a show for 10 years you become heavily reliant on that nice steady job”, he tells me. “Any actor who has been out of work knows what it’s like. You’re just terrified that you’re never going to work again. For my own sanity I wanted to keep working. And when I look back I shot a movie (Duane Hopwood) right away and then I did a play in the West End for four months, thenThe Big Nothing with Simon (Pegg). Literally since Friends I haven’t stopped. I just needed to demonstrate that to myself. I’m going to work. I’m going to be okay.”
Happily for us, Mr. Schwimmer has branched out into an even more fickle sector of the film industry. Having already moved to the other side of the camera for several episodes of Friends and Joey, Run, Fat Boy, Run, a delightful comedy set in London’s East End marks his debut as a film director. It is also the third occasion that Schwimmer has worked with Simon Pegg, his co-star from Band Of Brothers and The Big Nothing.
“I think I became aware of Spaced when we were both working on Band Of Brothers or maybe just after”, recalls David. “I was very much in my own world on that job. I was deeply into my character who was really insecure and isolated. So part of that meant being intensely antisocial. I’m not normally like that on a job, but that particular character was so different to me and so solitary that I just had to stay focused. It wasn’t until later I really began to appreciate the joys of Simon Pegg. I think he’s immensely talented. I mean Shaun Of The Dead is a modern classic.”
Having snapped up the Michael Ian Black screenplay shortly after Friends, David was already attached to Run, Fat Boy, Run, when he asked Mr. Pegg to both star and rewrite the script in his own inimitable style.
“I’m a huge fan of British comedy”, gushes David. “I’ve watched everything Monty Python did – both for films and TV. Like everyone else I’m a great fan of Fawlty Towers. And I love contemporary British comedy. I love The Office and Little Britain.
So Simon was an obvious choice. And he’s a brilliant writer. He totally Anglicised what was a quintessentially New York screenplay. But we need to give a lot of credit to Michael Ian Black because his script features pretty much the same characters and plot and some of the funniest situations that are set up in the film were already there. But Simon really honed the characters and dialogue to make them a little more sophisticated.”
The film, which provides gainful employment for such comedic talents as Dylan Moran and David Williams, sees Mr. Pegg gain a few pounds as Dennis, an indolent ne’er-do-well who jilts his beautiful pregnant fiancée (Thandie Newton) on their wedding day. Being slow of mind and deed, five years pass before he realises she’s the love of his life. Unfortunately, by now she has fallen for the slick charms of Hank Azaria. Determined to win her back, Mr. Pegg, for reasons far too convoluted to explain, sets out to run a marathon and prove his worth.
“Simon did the comedy and I pushed for the Kramer Vs. Kramer stuff”, explains David. “I wanted it to be moving as well as funny.”
Is he edging toward the respectability afforded by directing Serious Drama I wonder?
“I would like to direct dramatic features”, he says. “But it’s not because I’m seeking validation. I know how hard comedy is. But there is undeniably an unfair bias in the industry towards dramatic film. I think there have been many performances given by comedic actors that should have won Academy Awards. Because in many ways, comedy is much harder to pull off. If you think about Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor, it’s a stunning turn. He’s playing all these characters plus he’s actually giving a moving performance in the central role. I thought it was criminal that he was overlooked because, well, it’s The Nutty Professor”.
Despite highly publicised relationships with singer Natalie Imbruglia and Israeli actress Mili Avital and, according to Simon Pegg, legions of adoring young women making eyes wherever he goes, Mr. Schwimmer has yet to appear on a celebrity magazine in gaudy wedding clobber. I can’t imagine the matriarchs in his Nice Jewish Family are too pleased.
“Of course not:,” he laughs. “But the thing about coming from a Jewish households is that you’re hassled about not being married from the age of three.”
But you’ve surely had plenty of offers, I point out.
“I guess. But you don’t usually take it seriously when somebody on the street shouts ‘I’ll marry you’. And when they do sound like they mean it, that’s when you need really worry.”

Run, Fat Boy, Run is on general release.