Esquire Profiles "Puffy," "Jumbo," "Giant" Vince Vaughn
-
-
?>
-
Esquire put "Four Christmases" star Vince Vaughn on their December issue, and inside profiled the comedy star with what some may argue an over-emphasis on his size.
VINCE VAUGHN LOOKS A LOT LIKE VINCE VAUGHN, ONLY BIGGER. He's tall enough to have to duck through doorways, as he just did, and wide enough to spend a lot of time walking sideways through tight spaces, like this steakhouse. He wears a pair of old-school Nike sneakers that could be used as war canoes. About six and a half feet higher up, his hair rises like a wave above the low-tide beach that is his forehead. (He calls it his fivehead.) His face is full, puffy enough to make him sometimes look as though he's fighting to keep his eyes open--not as though he's just woken up but as though he's never bothered to go to bed in the first place. His shirt is open at the collar, probably because it has to be. It's also open at the waist. Even from across this crowded restaurant, it's possible to see a jumbo slice of Vaughn's naked belly. It's too much to ignore, this great golden acreage, because he leads with it and because it's probably been kissed by Jennifer Aniston, standing on her tippy-toes. The man doesn't just occupy airspace; he fills it.
Like many giants, Vaughn gave up trying to hide a long time ago. (He's a regular at this restaurant, a touristy joint on the busiest stretch of Hollywood Boulevard, and he's fine with the table in the center of the room, surrounded.) Unlike most big men, however, his stature doesn't offer him any protection, leaving him twice defenseless, omnipresent without being ominous....If, in our imaginations, there really were a star who might do that--if the public were surveyed about which actor was most likely to end up in some stranger's house after a night on the town, rummaging through the fridge and playing Wii Tennis for all his life--Vaughn would be him. Most people who saw him in Old School or Wedding Crashers or Dodgeball--most of the people in this restaurant, including the housewife who told him not to be scared when she leaned in and the guy out in the parking lot who clapped him on the shoulder like an old friend--probably caught themselves thinking, That guy's just a regular guy. That guy's just like me.
The truth is, Vince Vaughn isn't really like them. He's the biggest man in the room. And because of his size, and because he inherited from his salesman father a competitive streak as well as a knack for volume business, he is voracious in his appetites (steak and lobster and creamed spinach) and his desires (to be loved). He has an almost pathological need to please his public...
[Jon] Favreau shows up and Vaughn makes room for him on the couch. He's just wearing a T-shirt and jeans, sucking on a mint for lunch, ready to go to work. It's funny seeing them like this, the two guys from Swingers at their ten-year reunion, a little older, a little fatter, a little tired-seeming and wrung out...
And just then, Vince Vaughn looks the way a big man looks when someone stands up to him for the first time in his life. He looks like a man who knows that he can cover only so much ground, that even giants have their limits. He looks like a man who knows he will have to pick a side. He looks suddenly smaller. He still looks a lot like Vince Vaughn, only built to scale.
Read whole profile here (it's not online at Esquire)
Loading comments… 
First Posted: 11-11-08 09:11 AM | Updated: 12-12-08 05:12 AM