Thrills & Chills with JACK BLACK
He fights monsters in a new kid-friendly movie, Goosebumps, and recalls his childhood with a few demons of its own.
Jack Black is certain that his new movie, Goosebumps, will scare kids—but not too much. “I thought it would be fun to do a kids’ movie that was scary in the right amounts,” he says. “My sons are 7 and 9 years old, and they love a little spooky in their movies. Goosebumps felt like a perfect project, scary and funny—a great combo for me.”
In Goosebumps, opening Friday, Oct. 16, Black plays R.L. Stine, a fictionalized version of the real-life writer of popular children’s books, whose works are stuffed with frightening monsters from his dark imagination. When the monsters are accidentally “released” from his books and run amok, terrorizing the town, Black’s movie daughter, Hannah (Odeya Rush), her neighbor friend (Dylan Minnette) and a pal (Ryan Lee) join him on a frantic mission to force them back inside.
Goosebumps is expected to be another Jack Black hit. His
movies—including School of Rock, Gulliver’s Travels, King
Kong, Bernie, The D Train and the Kung Fu Panda series— have grossed more than $3.5 billion worldwide since
High Fidelity made him a star in 2000. Additionally, he’s starred in numerous TV shows—most recently the HBO political comedy series The Brink—and still finds time for a successful career as a producer, comedian and parody rock singer with his band, Tenacious D.
Wrestling With Demons
“Goosebumps was a great adventure,” Black says, “and a really fun role. It’s about forgiveness and not letting your rage and thirst for revenge control you, but it’s also about how some of those darker emotions can be used to create great masterworks. I play a guy with a dark past and a brilliant mind, wrestling with his own demons, literally.”
Black is sitting in a quiet café on a very hot afternoon in an upscale neighborhood in the hills of Los Angeles. The actor lives a few blocks away in a seven-bedroom mansion with his wife, Tanya, and their two sons, Samuel and Thomas. Clean-shaven and tidy, looking a decade younger than his 46 years, he is soft-spoken and stares intently when he listens.
Like the character he plays in
Goosebumps, Black has his own darkness, fears and a demon or two. He was 10 years old when his parents, aerospace engineers Judith Love and Thomas Black, divorced. By the time he was 14, he was struggling with substance abuse and other difficulties.
“I remember just lots of turmoil from that time period,” he says. “I was having a lot of troubles with cocaine . . . I was hanging out with some pretty rough characters. I was scared to go to school [because] one of them wanted to kill me. I wanted to get out of there.”
His parents enrolled him in Poseidon, a highly regarded private school for “troubled youth” in Los Angeles. “Most of the other kids there were expelled from other schools, but I went voluntarily,” he says. “It was a place to press the restart button.” Soul Searching Turning himself around took a few years and some deep soul searching. “Being raised a Jew, I didn’t have any kind of confessional. I couldn’t talk to my parents about the things that I was most guilty about. My dad loved me very much, but I needed someone who wasn’t judgmental at all, who wasn’t going to be disappointed with me.” Black turned to a school therapist. “I spilled my guts, telling him I felt guilty about stealing from my mom to get money for cocaine. I cried like a baby. It was a huge release and a huge relief. I left feeling euphoric, like an enormous weight had been lifted from me. It changed me.”
After leaving Poseidon, Black completed high school at Crossroads, a private college prep school in Santa Monica known for its programs in the arts. Other Crossroads alumni include actors Liv Tyler, Kate Hudson, Jonah Hill and Zooey Deschanel.
“As far back as I can remember, I loved putting on shows,” he says. “I loved acting. I loved the attention. Maybe there’s a connection in terms of finding an escape and always needing to be up onstage. The turning point was when I started thinking acting was what I wanted to do.”
After graduation, he attended UCLA to study theater.
“I didn’t really have a lot of [acting] prospects coming out of high school,” he says. “I needed a place to make some
“As far back as I can remember, I loved putting on shows. I loved
acting. I loved the attention. Maybe there’s a connection in terms of finding an escape and always needing to be up onstage.”
—Jack Black
then children—someone else’s—entered the picture.
“Something happened when I was on King Kong,” he says. “The fellow who plays King Kong, Andy Serkis, was there with his wife and kids, and he let me read a bedtime story to his kids. And I thought, Oh, I should have a kid. I want to have a family. There was an emptiness that started to develop after that. Now I’m happiest just swimming with my boys in the ocean.”
Helicopter Dad Many show business marriages fail. His marriage seems to work.
“What makes it work?” he asks. “I love her! I’d had decades of flings where, as soon as it was over, I was looking for the exit. I never feel that need to escape with Tanya.”
Black is devoted to his sons and says that he won’t do a New York–based Broadway show or other long-term project that might require his boys to move from home.
“Sometimes I think maybe I’m a little bit of a helicopter dad hovering above my kids and making sure that they never are in harm’s way,” he says. “But losing a family member is the worst thing I could imagine.”
Black is referring to the death of his older brother, Howard, who died of AIDS in 1989. “I have two gay siblings: my big sister, Rachel, and my big brother, Howard,” he says. “He was a big influence on me. He took me to my first rock concert. I was 11; he was 23. He was so vibrant, creative, amazing. He shaped my taste in music. [Death] didn’t happen quickly. We all saw the deterioration. He was only 31. So very young. We were robbed of something precious. It was devastating. It was hard for all of us, but it was hardest for my mom when we lost Howard. She’s never really recovered.”
His Magical Ride Beyond worrying about his family’s safety and happiness, Black has other fears, of course, including the possibility that he “could lose all the money and accoutrements that come with stardom.” But what matters the most, he says, is the sense of adventure. “If you lose the fun of the journey, then there’s no point in going on. It’s the thrill that I love the most. I’ve been on this ride that’s been really magical. If there were no money? I’d be putting on shows! It has to be a story that’s going to blow people’s minds. Then I don’t care if I get paid for it.”