PHILADELPHIA _ Lately Jonah Hill, the potty-mouthed teddy bear of “Superbad,” resembles a stuffed animal that’s lost its stuffing and gained muscle tone.
Did Hill shed those pounds by running the bases on the set of “Moneyball”? In the movie that opened Friday he is Peter Brand, statistics wonk, a composite of all the real-life wonks who helped Oakland Athletics manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) spot baseball players with high on-base percentages and low salaries.
Baseball, however, is not responsible for Hill’s newly-slim silhouette.
“I saw a nutritionist in November of last year,” says the soft-spoken actor, 27, a low-key presence whose rabbity un-insistence can eclipse high-profile performers like Russell Brand and Pitt.
“I just wanted to be healthier.” It’s a matter of “eating more fish and staying away from bread.” Plus “a lot of pushups and situps.” Looking a wee lost on the very big couch in a Philadelphia hotel suite, Hill, unfailing polite, wears an expression that says, “What am I doing here?” It’s challenging being an introvert at the extrovert party.
“I feel the same way promoting ‘Moneyball’ as I did when I did publicity for ‘Superbad.'” In that 2007 bro-mance co-starring Michael Cera, Hill was a high-school senior not quite ready to leave the safety of best-friendship and to pursue the girl of his dreams. In an apologetic voice he says, “I feel I should say, ‘Hey, I’m Jonah, I hope to make more movies like this. And I hope you accept me.'”
After “Superbad’s” surprise success, Hill says, “I kinda retreated. I didn’t want to make more movies until I adjusted to my new life.”
There is no retreat after “Moneyball.” Hill, who has an associate producer credit on Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Bruno,” wrote the film reboot of “21 Jump Street,” the one about young-looking cops who go undercover in high schools. He will star in the movie, due in March, opposite Channing Tatum.
Writing, the Los Angeles native is too shy to remind you, was his first love. He enrolled at The New School in Manhattan with the goal of becoming a playwright. “I took acting classes there to learn how to direct actors. And then, I fell in love with acting.”
And then an actor fell in love with him. That would be Dustin Hoffman, whose son and daughter were among his pals.
“Dustin was the first Billy Beane in my life,” Hill says, invoking the name of the A’s manager as a synonym for “mentor.” “He said, ‘You should be an actor.'” Hoffman helped get the would-be playwright a small role, as the brother of the adopted African boy, in “I Heart Huckabees.”
“Then I started auditioning, to no avail,” he recalls. And then, one night at the Grove, a popular theater adjacent to Farmer’s Market in Los Angeles, “I was sitting behind Seth Rogen at a showing of ‘The Life Aquatic.'”
Rogen, an actor in the orbit of Judd Apatow, told Hill (whose birth name is Jonah Feldstein) about an audition for “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.” Hill’s improvisation earned him a brief, but memorable role in the film as a would-be customer at a strip mall’s e-Bay store.
“Then, Apatow offered me a part as one of the roommates in ‘Knocked Up,'” Hill says. He’s grateful that the director gave him the space and time to create a character. “Judd is my second Billy Beane.”
When Hill won the role in “Superbad” he moved back to his childhood home. “I wanted to live in my high school bedroom like my character.” He’s living with his parents again, this time because his own home is being remodeled. A remodeled house for a remodeled owner.
Pitt, he says with quiet gratitude, is his “third Billy Beane.” Hill was energized by Pitt’s “passion” for acting and for architecture.
As for prepping for the role of Brand, Hill, who played first base on his Little League team, spent time with Paul De Podesta, advocate of the sabermetric analysis that is the premise of “Moneyball.” For himself, Hill is no seamhead, slang for stats-cruncher. But he knows that if movies were baseball, he would have an enviable on-base percentage.