Jeremy Piven: Away From The Entourage, Onto The Stage

JEREMY PIVEN was in repose, sort of. Dressed in a charcoal gray hoodie, both hands hugging an oversize mug of Guatemalan yerba maté tea, Mr. Piven was curled up on a couch in his rented Chelsea apartment one recent Saturday morning, the Alison Krauss-Robert Plant bluegrass album playing softly on his stereo. Is he really this chill?

Nope. "I was listening to Rage Against the Machine before you got here," he said, "but I didn't want to scare you away."

After five years -- and three consecutive Emmys -- playing the bombastic, catchphrase-generating superagent Ari Gold on the HBO series "Entourage," Mr. Piven, 43, is mindful of the energy he gives off. In person he is calmer, quieter and more questioning than the Type A guy's guys he often plays, but he is by no means receding. There are flashes of the off-the-cuff humor he has on red carpets and awards shows, and of the sharp-edged boundaries that can result from working steadily -- if, until "Entourage," without much fanfare -- in Hollywood for 20 years. And there's a cultivated self-awareness about him that suggests what he really is: a lifelong stage actor, an insider's insider.

That combination -- earnest craftsman projecting industry bristle -- is not too far from Bobby Gould, the budding studio executive he plays in the revival of "Speed-the-Plow," David Mamet's 1988 satire of Hollywood producers, set to open Thursday at the Barrymore Theater in Mr. Piven's Broadway debut.

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