The Verge: Justin Bartha

What is it like to shoot something so small and fast as Holy Rollers, where you get so few takes, as opposed to doing theater like Lend Me a Tenor, where you can constantly work on and revise your performance?

It's quite a bit different. The great thing about theater is that once you're done with rehearsal and you go up, the performance is yours. That curtain goes up, and you can kind of do whatever you want for two and a half hours, whereas on film, you're always subject to an editor and whatever someone else's vision is. Obviously on the play, we had the vision of Stanley Tucci, but it's live and unedited and there's a very thrilling aspect to it.

Did it take you a while to get over the fact that no matter what performance you give on a film, it's so subjective to the filmmaker's vision?

[Laughs] I mean, I still struggle with that. A lot of actors struggle with that, I think. It's something that you just have to expect, or you'll drive yourself crazy. From the get-go of my career, when I first started to realize that that's how it works, it could be kind of maddening. You're not only subject to an editor, you're sometimes subject to a studio and whatever agenda there is there. You can be subject to so many different things, not just the editing process and whatever takes the director uses. The only recourse that an actor has is to try to choose really good roles with really interesting people, especially directors and other actors. That's kind of the only way I can choose my material, so I don't have to drive myself crazy.

What's happening with The Rebound, the Bart Freundlich romantic comedy you shot a few years ago with Catherine Zeta-Jones? It's been released almost everywhere but the U.S.

It's a really great movie, and Bart is such an immensely talented director, it's crazy. Unfortunately, when our economy kind of went into the shi**er, it took with it some parts of this business, too. Mark Gill, who produced the movie, is starting his own distribution mini-studio, so they're trying to get that together. This would be the first film he's releasing, so it's a huge undertaking. Right now, it's been a product of that difficulty.

Do you take that into account when you select projects, especially small ones without assured distribution?

Yeah. It comes back to what I said before: if you do interesting stuff with directors or actors, that's really all you can look for. Otherwise, you never know what's going to happen, unless it's a big studio. Even with that, though, I've been a part of big studio movies where they end in limbo and disaster.

I'm hearing that the Hangover sequel is going to give you a bigger piece of the action this time.

No one has read the script except for the director, Todd, so we shall see. I can't really reveal too much about it, but I'll be there and I'm very excited to get the guys back together.

You can't just email Todd and be like, "Hey man, can I have a peek at the script?"

To be completely honest, it's one of those projects where I would literally come on for a day and do craft services if they would have me. It's such a great project to be a part of, so I don't care if my part is ten times bigger or ten times smaller. Just being around those brilliant people is enough for me.

[Lead Photo Credit: Jim Spellman/WireImage]

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