Jake Johnson
b'Jake Johnson\\u2019s made a career out of acting next to some of the top names in the business, and that\\u2019s exactly how he likes it. From his vantage point, he\\u2019s got the best seat in the house, watching people like Zooey Deschanel (New Girl), Tom Cruise (The Mummy), and Cobie Smulders (Stumptown) do their thing. All the while, he\\u2019s living out a dream that started when he was a kid, watching shows like\\xa0Cheers\\xa0and\\xa0Roseanne\\xa0and desperately wanting to be in them.Jake and his two siblings were brought up by their mother in a Chicago suburb. He wasn\\u2019t a great student, but he lit up when he discovered writing and acting in high school. \\u201cBack then, I was in a very tricky emotional place, but writing plays, I had total control, and I loved it.\\u201d Combine that with the praise he received from performing in the school sketch show, and he knew he found his thing.Now, Jake\\u2019s 41 and still doing it, and his favorite part of the work is getting to play within the world of\\xa0make-believe. It\\u2019s why he\\u2019s drawn to the sets of filmmaker Joe Swanberg (Drinking Buddies,\\xa0Digging for Fire,\\xa0Win It All) and turned off by micro-managing directors who kill the magic and overshoot scenes. \\u201cI\\u2019m not here for your final cut. I\\u2019m here for right now\\u2014me and this other human being can act. Let us act, and get the camera out of here. Hide it, and let us go!\\u201dJake joins\\xa0Off Camera\\xa0to talk about forging a relationship with his absent father, the rude awakening he got after dropping out of high school, and his stint as a degenerate gambler\\u2026luckily, he was saved by\\xa0New Girl.'