Back in my hometown, there was a farm boasting the world’s largest pig—a creature the size of a small minivan, often seen dozing. I’ve often pondered its fate, and now, perhaps, I have an answer: it became a meal for none other than actor David Krumholtz.
From Lean Times to Plenty: krumholtz’s Oscar Triumph and “Lousy Carter”
Even for the luckiest of actors, there are lean times amid the fat. Yet, on the Monday following the Oscars, Krumholtz finds himself in a period of plenty. His role as the menschy physicist Isidor Rabi in “Oppenheimer” led the film to a triumphant night, securing seven trophies including Best Picture. And just around the corner, “Lousy Carter,” an indie comedy where Krumholtz shines as a dyspeptic literature professor, is set to hit theaters. (The New York Times deems it “repellently watchable.”) “You spend a lot of awards seasons watching from your couch, thinking, Those sons of bitches. When am I going to get my chance? ” Krumholtz reflects. “And then it happens, and it’s almost too much. I don’t know if I prefer the couch.”
A Ravenous Appetite: A Hollywood Celebration Turns Comical
Today, sporting a Knicks hat and a Mario mustache for a role, Krumholtz finds himself ravenous. “I barely ate last night,” he admits. “You run around like a nutcase.” We find ourselves at the Formosa Cafe on Santa Monica Boulevard, a storied Chinese restaurant dating back to the Golden Age of Hollywood. Sinatra, Bogey, Elvis, and John Wayne once graced its tables. The plan? To celebrate “Oppenheimer’s” success by communing with the ghosts of Los Angeles’ past. Fate, however, has a more literal metaphor in mind.
An Unexpected Feast: krumholtz’s Food Odyssey at the Formosa Cafe
They say when you ask, the universe provides. Sometimes, it provides a bit too generously. Krumholtz, bypassing the $24 lunchbox deal, declares, “I’m going to get whatever the fuck I want.” He settles on the spicy wok-fried rice with chicken and Chinese barbecue pork. A decision he soon regrets. The rice arrives on a platter resembling Scarface’s mountain, while the pork seems to hail from a prehistoric behemoth. “It’s bigger than either of our heads, lacquered to a deep mahogany,” he laments. A half-dozen bao buns and a heaping bowl of salad join the feast. It’s the Oppenheimer of food orders—a gargantuan spectacle requiring special accommodations (in this case, a second table) for proper display. “Oh God almighty, what did I do?” Krumholtz exclaims.
The Many Roles of David Krumholtz: Nerd, Mathematician, Character Actor
Krumholtz has often found himself juggling a lot on his plate. His entry into showbiz as a child actor often cast him as the quintessential nerd: a nerdy camper in “Addams Family Values,” a Shakespeare-reciting nerd in “10 Things I Hate About You,” and a former nerd turned cool kid in “Freaks and Geeks.” (Who could forget his turn as Bernard the Elf in the “Santa Clause” movies?) Then, in the 2000s, nerds became not just cool, but hot. Landing a leading role in CBS’s “Numb3rs” in 2005, he spent six seasons as a broodingly handsome mathematician. The show bid adieu in 2010. A year later, he faced a thyroid cancer diagnosis. Post-thyroidectomy, “I just ballooned,” he recalls. He never aspired to eternal sexiness. “That’d be gross,” he jokes, but the onslaught of before-and-after shots left him wishing he’d never been hot to begin with.
The Eyes of Authenticity: krumholtz’s Character Actor Persona
Now in his 40s, Krumholtz has embraced the character actor persona. You might recognize him as a member of an underground communist cell in “Hail, Caesar!” or a porno director schooling Maggie Gyllenhaal in “The Deuce.” His greatest asset? His eyes. When he turns them on, a hangdog expression brims with wry humor and unexpected warmth. In “Oppenheimer,” Krumholtz’s Rabi acts as the audience’s confidant, grounding the film’s theory with earthy authenticity. Yet, despite the film’s SAG Award for Best Cast, Krumholtz missed the invite to the Oscars.
The Humor of Humility: krumholtz’s Take on Character Actor Life
A character actor’s life demands humility and a healthy dose of self-deprecation. “When Cillian Murphy shows up at parties, they radio, ‘The eagle has landed.’ When I show up, they say, ‘The roach is here,’” he quips. “I feel like people see me coming and go, ‘That cannot be an actor.’” Maintaining a deliberate sense of ordinariness, he adds, “I’m not offended by it at all.”
The Last Shot at Oscar Glory: krumholtz’s Reflections on Hollywood
Nonetheless, after three decades in the business, Krumholtz understood this might be his last shot at an Oscar season. “I was panicking a little bit,” he admits. “All the anticipation: How will I feel? And when you win, you don’t want to miss a beat. You want to soak it up.” On the grand night, Krumholtz donned a tux, watched the Oscars from the Universal party at Soho House, and hit a few after-parties. At one point, he met a 27-year-old doctor at the urinal. “I said, ‘I’m in Oppenheimer, we just won everything.’ He said, ‘In that case, you get free Botox from my office.’ And I thought I should probably go.” By 11:15, he was home, one new Instagram follower richer.
The Farewell to L.A.: krumholtz’s Departure and Personal Reflections
Though Krumholtz’s formative years unfolded in Los Angeles, he no longer calls it home. “Being in L.A. has become excruciating,” he confides. “There are memories around every corner, ghosts of my past.” He bid farewell to the city in the early 2010s, marking what he considers his personal and professional nadir. Krumholtz, not born into wealth, found “Numb3rs” brought in more money than he’d ever dreamed of. “I was that guy,” he admits. “I’d go to super-fancy French restaurants and order the $6,000 bottle of wine. I paid for my own wedding at the Plaza Hotel, a quarter of a million dollars.” A Hollywood Hills home, boasting four stories and an elevator, proved a disaster. “The roof started leaking as soon as we moved in. The elevator broke, costing $11,000 to replace. My friends mocked me. I got foreclosed on, a short sale. I lost half a million dollars. You start looking at your house and going, I am my house. I’m crumbling.”
Missed Opportunities and Hollywood’s Pitfalls: krumholtz’s Regrets
It wasn’t just the house. For a brief time, “Numb3rs” put him on the map, yet he felt unable to capitalize. In 2006, Krumholtz scored the lead in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris,” prompting him to bow out of a stoner role in “Knocked Up.” Alas, labor disputes in France scuttled Paris’ financing, and the project crumbled. (He’d later star in Allen’s “Wonder Wheel,” a decision he now regrets.) Months later, Quentin Tarantino came calling for “Inglourious Basterds.” Numb3rs commitments rendered it impossible. “You just know at that moment those opportunities are never going to come again.”
Fame, Tragedy, and Reflection: krumholtz’s Hollywood Journey
Then, a seismic shift—friend and co-star Seth Rogen skyrocketed to fame. “In my friend group, there were six of us, then suddenly there were like 80 of us,” Krumholtz recalls. He vividly remembers a Hollywood Bowl concert with Rogen the weekend “Knocked Up” premiered; within seconds, they found themselves mobbed by strangers. “Seth is one of the toughest people I know. But I saw a fear in his eyes that I’d never seen before. And I thought, The first rush of fame is fear.”
Soon after, tragedy struck—first with the death of friend Heath Ledger, then his “Sidewalks of New York” co-star Brittany Murphy. “It was madness,” Krumholtz reflects. “Like, wow—I’m in Hollywood where people die of drug overdoses, and friends become wildly famous, and there’s missed opportunities. It was a really hard time.”
Embracing Discontent: krumholtz’s Pursuit of Authenticity
This tumult coincided with a slowdown in calls. In Hollywood, he notes, “the mire of the ego swamp that gets created within you while you’re here” is hard to escape. “But at a certain point, I became embarrassed by myself.” So he made the decision to leave. “When you work in L.A., the sun shines brighter. Conversely, when you’re out of work and searching, the town gets dim. Everywhere you go, you’re reminded of what you’re not working on.” Today, Krumholtz proudly calls New Jersey home, where “the billboards tout plumbers and injury lawyers.” During his Broadway stint in “Leopoldstadt” in 2022, he marveled at his traffic-free 37-minute commute and performed for 195 shows sans traffic snarl.
The Twitter Tales and Truths: krumholtz’s Candid Revelations
Krumholtz once shunned interviews, hoping to cultivate an air of mystery. Yet, he soon realized he suffered from a plight common among character actors—while people recognized him from individual roles, they failed to connect the dots to his broader body of work. With “Oppenheimer,” he feels the door may have cracked open again, and for “Lousy Carter,” he’s ready to step into the spotlight. “Thirty-two years, 51 movies in, I think it’s time I stand and be counted a bit.” His recent foray onto the now-rebranded Twitter likely aided this resurgence. As “Oppenheimer” dominated awards season, Krumholtz wove popular threads, unveiling untold industry tales. These threads, reminiscent of Twitter’s heyday—funny, racy, and revealing—struck a chord. One anecdote detailed a Cancun escapade with Crazy Town, culminating in a vomit-covered Krumholtz jeopardizing a gig opposite Jerry Springer on MTV’s “Say What Karaoke.” Yet, some threads took a darker turn. His final thread, a mini-essay on “an actor’s product as their self,” resonated deeply, highlighting how actors often become “shells of themselves hiding within the shells of others.”
Lessons Learned: From Loss to Unfettered Acting
Penned from bed, Krumholtz’s raw honesty struck a chord, earning the thread viral status and renewed media interest. Yet, upon reflection, he realized he couldn’t wait for validation. “I was indulging in that old knee-jerk ego response: ‘Pay attention to me, please.’” Thus, he bid adieu to his public account, though a secret handle lurks for his clandestine perusal. Yet, the truths within those tweets endure. “I don’t know what acting is. I don’t think it’s an art form. It’s not easy, but it looks easy,” he muses. “The hardest part is getting out of your way, of thinking, How will this be received?”
Embracing Discontent: krumholtz’s Pursuit of Something Special
For Krumholtz, this insight came at a price—his father’s passing. “I needed to have my heart broken,” he reveals. As his father’s caretaker, witnessing the elder Krumholtz’s fortitude ignited a fire within him. But it was “The Deuce” co-star Maggie Gyllenhaal who taught him to act unfettered by expectation. “I was angry, and I thought, I’ll use this. But Maggie’s style is, ‘Let’s just feel something. Let’s not make any rules.’ Suddenly, for the first time in my career, I didn’t see the camera anymore.”
Serendipitous Encounters: Annie Lennox and Hollywood Legends
Krumholtz hasn’t abandoned concern for his performances’ reception entirely. A few years back, he began turning down overtly Jewish roles, fearing typecasting as a rabbi for the next three decades. Yet “Lousy Carter,” a film as modest as “Oppenheimer” is grand, showcases the kind of unbridled performance only an unencumbered actor can deliver. Shot in 15 days for $100 a day (SAG minimum), Krumholtz portrays a college professor facing six months to live—opting not for redemption, but reveling in his worst impulses. “He should be totally relieved that he’s dying, and that’s how I want to play it,” Krumholtz explains. “He’s happier than he’s ever been.” If this isn’t quite Krumholtz, at least he’s content in his discontent. For years, he wrestled with the shame of never feeling satiated. “Why couldn’t I just look back on the work I’d done and be content?” he pondered. “Only recently have I gone, No, you’ll never be able to do that. I need to think that I have the potential to be something special. I feel like I owe it to the spirits of the people who are no longer here to be awesome. I want to be doing this when I’m 90.”
Hollywood’s Allure and a Farewell: A Chance Encounter with Annie Lennox
In one of Los Angeles’ serendipitous moments, our mammoth meal is interrupted by none other than Annie Lennox and her husband. “Legends walk among us,” Krumholtz whispers. As they settle in the booth behind us, he rises to thank Lennox for her call for peace in Gaza. “I’m not going to bother you, but I’m Jewish, and I really appreciate everything you said about the conflict.”
“I’ve always wanted peace for everyone,” Lennox replies.
Thirty minutes later, as they bid adieu, Lennox’s husband pauses by our table. He couldn’t help overhearing, he admits to Krumholtz. “If you won an award last night, congratulations.”
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