CELEBRITIES

Power Geeks

Move over hunks: the nerdy set is on a box-office roll.


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Photographer: Ari Marcopoulos

Michael Cera

“You have some amazing cameras,” Michael Cera says, wide-eyed, to the photographer who’s meant to be snapping him. Soon, the sweetly awkward 19-year-old is handling the cameras himself, taking shots of the photographer, as his handlers check their watches. They don’t dare interrupt him, though—but not because he’s the kind of cocky star who doesn’t like being told what to do. It’s just that Cera’s demeanor is so breathtakingly gentle, his enthusiasm for the cameras so genuine, that it would be nothing less than churlish to issue even the mildest reprimand…Read the article

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Photographer: Ari Marcopoulos

Jon Heder

As the star of the 2004 film Napoleon Dynamite, Jon Heder is best known for donning moon boots and a hideous perm, keeping handfuls of Tater Tots in his pockets and bringing back “Gosh!” as an expression of teen angst. So it is a bit disconcerting to discover that, in the flesh, he’s actually quite the heartthrob. Sure, he’s talking about being up all night with his flu-ridden infant daughter—hardly Hollywood bad-boy territory—but in his cool aviator shades and distressed denim, he clearly isn’t the type who lacked for popularity in school, unlike his alter ego. “They originally cast a different kid as Napoleon, a guy who was the real deal,” says Heder. “He was weird—he could have just acted like himself. But then they cast me, and I had to really get into a character.”…Read the article

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Photographer: Ari Marcopoulos

Christopher Mintz-Plasse

Christopher Mintz-Plasse made his first-ever late-night talk-show appearance two weeks before Superbad’s theatrical release last summer. His plans for the future, he told host Jimmy Kimmel, included making up a failed high school Spanish class at community college. “Yeah, that’s not happening anymore,” admits the pale and lanky 18-year-old, who has leveraged his role as the ID-faking, cop-befriending McLovin into a packed filming schedule, including work on Little Big Men with Paul Rudd and the Harold Ramis–directed Year One…Read the article

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Photographer: Ari Marcopoulos

David Krumholtz

David Krumholtz misses his peacoat. “No one wears black here,” he laments. “I’m so over L.A.” One suspects it’s not just West Coast fashion that’s got the Queens native down but also the monotony that comes from spending the past two years filming his TV drama, CBS’s Numb3rs, which has turned the curly-haired Krumholtz, 29, who plays a math professor who helps crack criminal cases, into an unlikely sex symbol among brainy schoolgirls across America. “It’s boring.… I get disenchanted,” he admits. It’s a great role, sure, but a glance at Krumholtz’s résumé reveals an actor compelled to try new things…Read the article

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Photographer: Ari Marcopoulos

Jonah Hill

“I just sat through The Music Man,” says a bemused and slightly traumatized Jonah Hill, who arrives to an interview straight from his 14-year-old sister’s high school musical. “Halfway through I thought to myself, I should make a musical-comedy movie called Where’s That Music Coming From?”…Read the article