JEREMY PIVEN PULLS OUT HIGHS AND LOWS

Jeremy Piven dug deep to play a cocaine addicted Las Vegas entertainer who hits rock bottom in Smokin’ Aces.

Entourage star Jeremy Piven gives a raw and realistic performance as cocaine addicted Las Vegas entertainer Buddy Israel who is at the end of his rope in Smokin’ Aces.

Jeremy who is a health nut will take the occasional espresso to get amped up but was able to visit those dark places to reach for the highs and lows of his character.

“I think anyone can relate to having to take a real look at yourself or to question whether or not you’re an authentic person and human being. And so to have that moment where this guy is really, really, really lost and once you put that much chemicals in your body and you’re hiding and all this stuff, and things are falling apart and you have to look at yourself and to really hate what you see and to be cursing nature it’s a tragic place to be. Thank God I got to walk through it in a fictional way.”

Jeremy also visited the Magic Castle where he saw how magicians perform. He did most of the card tricks in the film except one.

“I did all those magic tricks except for one. The close-up on the hand. I had hired these two twins believe it or not. You know when the hands crumble, these kids can do stuff. They make origami out of cards. I mean I’ve never seen anything like it. No one can do what they do so that wasn’t me. That would probably have taken me 15 years to learn. That stuff that they were doing, building on that. There’s no way, but the rest of the stuff I did.”

Next Jeremy will join his Smokin’ Aces co-star Peter Berg who directed him in The Kingdom based on a story by Michael Mann about a team of U.S. government agents who investigate the bombing of an American facility in the Middle East.