The That '70s Show and In Good Company actor could be just like you. Except he's rich, successful, humble, famous — and the recipient of some very good luck.
I saw Topher Grace on the train a month ago, on the Metro North New Haven Line heading towards Manhattan. I boarded at South Norwalk where I'd just lunched with some clients from an advertising agency. I was in the process of hanging up my sports jacket and loosening my tie when I glanced up and saw this scrawny, scruffy kid shuffling down the aisle. Everything about him was unremarkable, from his blue jeans and black wool jacket with a hooded sweatshirt underneath to his slack, moderately handsome pale and expressionless face. He looked like anybody U.S.A., interesting only for the fact that he strongly resembled the guy from That '70s Show. A moment later I realized he was that actor and the realization caused me to be utterly depressed.
It's one thing to see actors on TV and in the movies or in People Weekly; they are far away from my sphere, living a life so different from mine they may as well be aliens on a faraway planet. That alienation is comforting because it removes any semblance of competition between us. For example, if I found out one of my high school classmates was making a million dollars a year, I would seethe with jealousy and feel like a loser, but the fact that Brad Pitt makes $20 million a movie is fine with me — he's a sexy, buff stud-muffin with whom I have nothing in common.
But this guy, this Topher . . . he was suddenly all up in my business, taking the same commuter train as me on a Tuesday afternoon and dressing like I would dress if I wasn't at work. A movie star my age, my height, doing the same thing I was doing, yet I could work in advertising my entire life and never make as much money as he makes in one year. As he passed by my seat, the wake of his success washed over me and I almost drowned in an overwhelming feeling of inadequacy. I fought the urge to tear off my tie and hang myself from the luggage rack.
How can this be? I had to do some research, I had to figure out how this kid made it to the big time and I became just another cog in the work machine. I was hoping to read about his early struggles, how he was a poor kid from Bridgeport, son of a single mother with a drug dependency who moved to Hollywood in his teens and spent years living off the couches of friends and shared cold, stale pizzas with cockroaches for all three of his daily meals. I wanted to read about how hard he toiled, how many auditions he went on before he landed That '70s Show, about his embarrassing first role as a mentally retarded kid on a soap opera. I could deal with that history because I know I could never endure that kind of suffering and humiliation. That alone would explain how Topher managed to become a famous actor and I became an online advertising salesman.
But it didn't happen that way for Topher. Oh no, Topher's fame happened by accident! Topher never wanted to be an actor; he never took acting lessons, he never participated in grade school musical reviews. Instead, Topher wanted to be a pro tennis player, a dream that was unfortunately derailed when he sprained his ankle during his senior year at a boarding school in New Hampshire. He decided to use his free time constructively and tried out for a school production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. It just so happened that one of the cast members was the daughter of some big-shot Hollywood producers. After seeing the show, they approached Topher and asked his permission to contact him when he left for California to attend USC. A few months later, the producers called him, auditioned him, and cast him as Eric Forman in That '70s Show.
Talk about luck. You know, I also played tennis in high school and I was also unable to play one season. Why didn't I become a famous actor? Maybe it was the difference in circumstances: Topher couldn't play tennis because he sprained his ankle; I couldn't play tennis because I was caught hazing freshman tennis players and got kicked off the team. Even so, perhaps if I'd spent my free time auditioning for school plays rather than smoking cigarettes at the Dairy Queen parking lot, I'd be where Topher is today.
To be fair, while his early success appears to be disgustingly painless, his subsequent achievements seem well deserved, the result not of whimsical role choices but of a careful career decisions. After all, the jump from TV sitcom star to movie star is nearly impossible to make. Many make a failure of the attempt, including Topher's That '70s Show costar, the insufferable Ashton Kutcher. Instead of jumping at a role in a movie along the lines of Dude, Where's My Car?, Topher held out for something better. He found it in Traffic playing a strong supporting role as a heroin-addicted prep school kid. In a recent interview, Topher admitted, "I'm as proud of the eight bad movies I passed on as I am of Traffic, the first film I actually did . . . a lot of people want to become famous as fast as they can, but I'd rather take my time."
And while Kutcher was living a high-profile life and getting on the cover of the tabloids every week for dipping into an older woman's pot, Topher played it low-key. As a result, the tabloids left him alone. His personal life is a secret. No one knows anything about his love life. The only thing he admits about his personal life is that he loves Star Wars and runs a weekly no-celebs-allowed Monopoly game at his house. Nerd alert.
Nerd or not, his cautious game plan seems to be working. Besides a brief cameo in Ocean's 11, Topher focused his energies on his sitcom and waited for another golden opportunity. In 2003, he landed a role in the estrogen-laden, star-studded movie Mona Lisa Smile, and by 2004 he had already played a lead role in Win a Date With Tad Hamilton. Now, neither one of those movies was anywhere near the quality of Traffic, but they did well enough to keep Topher in Hollywood's good graces (pardon the pun). In 2004, he starred opposite Laura Linney in P.S., a role for which he won a National Board of Review's Breakthrough Performance. And now he's starring with Dennis Quaid and Scarlett Johansson in the comedy, In Good Company, in which Topher plays a mid-20s advertising executive who is brought in by the corporation to replace Quaid's 51-year-old character as head of sales.
Yet, for all his success, I am still baffled as to why he's so appealing to audiences. He's decently good looking, or "kinda cute" as a female friend of mine said, and he's funny in self-deprecating, acerbic, David Spade-like way, but he's a far cry from a Hollywood hunk. His characters are often unpleasant or pathetic, like the jaded and misguided Seth in Traffic and the whining manager of the Piggly Wiggly shopping center he plays in Win a Date a Date with Tad Hamilton. Then what makes people like him so much? The director of In Good Company told an interviewer he thinks Topher's appeal lies in the fact that he doesn't try too hard to be likeable — whatever that means. Dennis Quaid also has a hard time putting his finger on it. "There is something iconic about Topher that I think is going to serve him in his film career. And I'm not sure what that is yet," said Quaid in a recent interview. "But there's something about him that's really special."
I'll have to take Quaid's word for it, because let me tell you, there was nothing special about him that day on the train. Now that I think about it, there is something ironic about Topher Grace's role in In Good Company, something that brings our brief encounter on the train full circle — in the most insulting way possible. Not only is Topher astronomically more famous and successful than me in real life, he is now basically playing me — a 26-year-old advertising salesperson — the major difference being his character is the head of his department, which actually makes him a more successful version of me than I am myself. Talk about feelings of inadequacy.
