Fast Chat: Jonah Hill is a man of few words

Some actors are talkative and lively. Some aren't. Comic actor Jonah Hill, 26, is one of the latter. Sitting at a midtown office, wearing a sport coat, a button-down shirt and sneakers, and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, he's anything but the boisterous blusterer or excitable young man he plays in films like "Superbad" (2007), "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" (2008) or the recent "Get Him to the Greek."

Fortunately, he's also nothing like "Cyrus," the title character of his darkly comic new picture, in which he holds his own opposite the likes of Academy Award winner Marisa Tomei and Oscar nominees John C. Reilly and Catherine Keener. That's quite a feat, especially considering Cyrus and his mom (Tomei) share an overly Oedipal bond that would make many actors say, "Ick!"

Hill, who was raised in Los Angeles and moved to New York to attend The New School, spoke with frequent Newsday contributor Frank Lovece.

I'm sure you did not do Method-acting research on sociopathically Oedipal sons in order to play Cyrus.

No, I did not. But it's definitely a different sort of challenge for me. It's very different than any of the parts I've played and a very different tone than any of the films I've been in so far.

Cyrus is certainly a different character from your usual roles. One newspaper writer, talking about your character in "Get Him to the Greek," described it as "Jonah Hill [playing] what he always plays; a round, slightly creepy, but generally lovable character." What do you say to something like that?

I think it's false.

Which part? The round, the slightly creepy, or the generally lovable?

I don't think my character in "Get Him to the Greek" is anything like my character in "Cyrus." I don't think either of them are like my character in "Superbad."

Actors say that even if you're playing Mussolini, you can't play him as a villain, but someone who believes what he's doing is genuinely right. What did you find like that in Cyrus?

I don't think I have anything in common with Cyrus. I understand him - I just don't have anything in common with him. I feel bad for him, so [I found] sympathy, I guess - compassion for him.

You got your start doing comic monologues at a bar called Black and White.

Yeah, it's a great bar.

You were 19?

I was 18.

The drinking age in New York is 21.

Yeah.

So . . . you looked older?

No, I didn't look older. I just had a fake ID, I guess.

Ah! Like McLovin in "Superbad"! Now, I see you're listed as an associate producer of the Sacha Baron Cohen mockumentary "Brüno" (2009). What exactly does the associate producer of a Sacha Baron Cohen movie do? Was it sort of a real-life "Get Him to the Greek"?

I basically was a writer on that movie, and that was the credit I ended up receiving. It was really fun. Sacha is a hero of mine, and getting to write with those writers and him every day for six months was like a dream come true for me.

And speaking of writing, you've said you're working on a couple of screenplays, one called "Middle Child" and the other "Pure Imagination." At what stage are they?

"Middle Child" was something I was going to do with Seth Rogen, and then "Step Brothers" came out, and we felt the premises were too similar, so we kind of didn't make it. And then "Pure Imagination" [about a traumatized young man who doesn't know if the girl he begins dating is real or a figment of his imagination] is something I'm still working on and trying to nail the tone of it. It's difficult to get the tone of that correct, because it's tricky trying to make sure it's funny but seems honest.

Whimsy is the hardest thing in the world to write.

What's whimsy?

Um . . . a light, kind of fantastical story, like in [the movies] "Amélie" and "Big Fish"?

Like whimsical? Yeah, it's a big concept, so it is harder to ground it in some sort of reality. Hey, you just have to take the time to make sure you do it right, because you never want to make the bad version of a good story.