Bill Hader: No Longer a 'Nutless Monkey'
"SNL" actor plays a swinging amusement park director in "Adventureland."
March 25, 2009 -- "'A nutless monkey can do your job.' That's what people on the street come up to me and say. Of course, I would be with my in-laws and they would start to cry. I would have to explain it's a line from a movie," mused Bill Hader in an interview for ABC News Now's "Popcorn With Peter Travers."
Hader's unfortunate monkey association comes from "Tropic Thunder," last summer's Ben Stiller action-comedy. Tom Cruise played Les Grossman -- a foul-mouthed dirty-dancing studio exec -- whose hapless assistant is none other than Hader. "Tom Cruise was great. He took all that stuff seriously. He was working with the choreographer and getting all his moves down. He was so cool, the nicest guy," said Hader.
The first time Hader met Cruise was at the table read for the film. According to Hader, Cruise had no idea who he was until he mimicked Seth Rogen and exclaimed, "You do impersonations and you're on SNL!"
Hader is in his fourth season on "Saturday Night Live" and is co-starring in director Greg Mottola's "Adventureland" along with fellow "SNLer" Kristen Wiig. The film is set in Pittsburgh, in 1987, at an amusement park. The movie centers on a college student, played by Jesse Eisenberg ("The Squid and the Whale") who is forced to spend the summer at the Adventureland amusement park after his plans for a European vacation get scuttled by bad finances.
Hader and Wiig play the married couple who run the park -- "a repressed couple who probably swing," according to the director Greg Mottola. This is not Hader's first movie with Mottola, as they worked together on "Superbad" in which he starred opposite Seth Rogen.
He joked that like all "SNLers," he and Wiig acted like divas on the set and in fact, he threw his weight around before he was even an actor. "As a PA, I wouldn't get coffee. I was the only PA with an agent or a publicist."
Hader's strength is impersonations. He has famously imitated Daniel Day-Lewis' "There Will Be Blood" character, Daniel Plainview and the improbable catchphrase, "I drink your milkshake."
