Zach Galifianakis Hates to Be Loved

That's one of the many reasons people love the fame-averse scene stealer of the Hangover movies

By Joel Stein Thursday, May 19, 2011
    • Warner Bros.

    Zach Galifianakis in The Hangover Part II

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    And he always can. "Most comic actors have a darkness in their eyes," says Phillips. "Zach has a warmth behind his eyes. The only other guy I worked with who is like that is Will Ferrell." In The Hangover Part II (out May 26), in which Alan and his roofies nearly destroy their lives and Bangkok, Galifianakis' tender monologue to a bullet-wounded monkey is the most emotional moment.

    Galifianakis spends a lot of time on his farm in North Carolina, not far from where he grew up in a tiny town called Wilkesboro, where his father worked as a heating-oil vendor and his mother ran a community center for the arts. His farm doesn't have cell-phone reception or long-distance service, but it does have a pipe that lets him throw beer bottles into the basement recycling bin without having to go downstairs. In L.A., he lives in a small apartment he rents out when he's not in town. When Ed Helms, his Hangover co-star and a fellow stand-up comedian, moved to L.A. to act in The Office , he rented the place for five months. "It's sort of like the hotel for transients, homeless people and comedians," Helms says. "It's tiny. It's in Venice, which gets very cold, and it's only heated by a wood-burning stove. It also doesn't have a shower. It only has a bathtub. You kind of feel like you're living inside of Zach's beard."

    "You're seeing a guy who moves through the world unapologetically," Helms adds. "I think that's a lot of his appeal."

    Being unapologetic tends to lead to confrontations, which Galifianakis never seems to mind. He failed out of North Carolina State University by one class (he'd spent the day before the final drunkenly heckling his professor at a church softball game). In 1995, held at gunpoint in New York, he refused to give up the $135 in his wallet, telling the mugger, "I don't have any money, and the cops behind me are watching you." Tommy Blancha, the head writer for Galifianakis' short-lived 2002 VH1 talk show, says his lack of fear comes from a sharp sense that no one is better than anyone else. "I wouldn't overthink it, though," Blancha adds. "There's a good portion of plain old redneck in there too."

    Although he's loudly, proudly liberal, Galifianakis has also got Southern charm and family values. He rarely curses. He loves The Andy Griffith Show . He hosts game nights at his house. He responds to fan letters by hand, because when his fans treat him like a person — sitting down and writing a letter, or talking to him when he's not eating or otherwise engaged — he becomes interested in them too. When kids come up to him and say how much they love The Hangover , he yells at their parents for letting them see it. In fact, he's not sure how he feels about adults' seeing the movie. After his mother watched the first Hangover , she voiced objections to the crass humor. "I had to get on the phone with my mom and say, 'I agree with you,'" he says. "But at some point, as it did well at the box office, all that embarrassment flew out the window. As long as I can fly them all over the world, they don't care. I could be in porno."

    Most people who know Galifianakis know his big Greek family, because he brings his parents, brother, sister and even his cousins everywhere. His parents and his older brother Greg went to Thailand for the Hangover Part II shoot, and the whole family went to Atlanta for Due Date . At premieres, they laugh way too hard at his lines. Though his father wanted him to play football and become a naval officer, he wrote to Johnny Carson, saying he should put his son on TV after he killed with a Shields-and-Yarnell-inspired mime sketch for his elementary school talent show.

    Greg says he always knew his brother would have a performing career. "But the cover of GQ — I would never have thought that would happen, especially with the way he dresses," he says. "It's more likely he would have been on the cover of Homeless Today ."

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