Jeremy Piven admitted that playing Ari Gold on "Entourage" led him to re-think his acting career in a HuffPost Live interview on Thursday.
"I've had people come up to me and literally say 'I am an a--hole because of you," he told Marc Lamont Hill in an appearance to promote his PBS series "Mr. Selfridge." "And it makes me feel terrible. It makes me feel like I want to retire.
"Ari Gold is the most reactive character that you can play," he continued. "If I'm glorifying that behavior, that's not a good thing."
Piven played the role of the bombastic and often vitriolic super-agent for eight seasons on HBO. He'll return as the infamous Gold in the much-anticipated Entourage movie, slated for a 2015 release.
Famous for his wrath, wit and work-ethic, Piven's Ari Gold imparted a vision of a Hollywood agent so vividly that the actor had to remind people he's just playing a role.
"I have heard people have actually fired their agents and I really try to tell them that it's a fictional character," Piven said of reactions to Gold. "What that is, is a combination of [writer] Doug Ellin's fantasy as to what an agent is, and an homage to [real life agent] Ari Emanuel and then me taking it and trying to flesh it out with as much humanity as possibly."
Watch Jeremy Piven's full HuffPost Live interview below:
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