Star struck

Reilly appreciated his Chicago theater experience even more after living in New York and Los Angeles. “There’s this competitive nature to those two places,” he explains. “In Chicago, even if you’re the toast of the town that’s not going to necessarily make you an international star, so the stakes are lower and as a result, people focus more on the work. And that was really valuable to me. It makes you a better actor. People ask me all the time, ‘I want to be an actor, what should I do? Should I get an agent and go to L.A.?’ I say, ‘No, go to Chicago and do plays because even if you aren’t being paid a lot, you’ll at least be able to be an actor.’ ”

It was in Chicago that Reilly honed the improv skills that would prove so useful when taking on Walk Hard’s main character. The film follows the 60-year career of musician Dewey Cox as he rockets to stardom, encountering the clichéd pitfalls of fame and fortune along the way. Reilly gets laughs from his first moment onscreen, when, in a gentle jab at the acting challenges of serious biopics, the 42-year-old, craggy-faced actor plays Cox as a doe-eyed 15-year-old. The actor goes on to plunge his character into ill-conceived marriages, drug addictions and heartbreak all while fathering dozens of children and churning out hit songs. The comic setups include a troubled childhood complete with a disco phase and an incident where the temperamental star throws his instrument—a grand piano.

Obviously, recent biopics like Ray and Walk the Line were on the minds of Judd Apatow and Jake Kasdan when they wrote the film, but Walk Hard takes aim at the entire genre. “The big metajoke of the movie is that if you line up any five musical biopics, there are so many similar scenes because it’s just the nature of the beast,” Reilly says. “When you’re telling the life story of a musician, there are a lot of similarities between these guys.”

When Apatow and Kasdan began discussing the idea for Walk Hard, they knew that whoever played Dewey Cox needed to be able to sing. Reilly was the first actor they thought of; he’d proved he could belt out tunes and dance in Chicago, and Apatow had recently witnessed Reilly’s comic talents firsthand when he produced Talladega Nights. “There was never a moment in our imagination when it was anyone other than Reilly,” says Kasdan, who also directed the film. “He seemed like the perfect person to the point where we were really building [the script] around him.”

Watching Reilly strut, strum and sing his way through Walk Hard is reminiscent of the broad comedic role audiences expect from Ferrell. Reilly says working with Ferrell on Talladega Nights taught him to be fearless with his body in pursuit of the perfect funny moment. “I have a certain modesty—I think it comes from growing up in Chicago and growing up Catholic,” he says. “But seeing Will run around in his underwear taught me that you have to sacrifice everything for the joke and it’s okay to look like an idiot.”

However, Reilly may be able to thank his down-to-earth Midwest roots for keeping the pressures of his first major studio release in check. “The work is already done,” he says matter-of-factly. “I did my performance. I put my back into it.” Reilly pauses, and then with a coy smile becomes a pitchman: “Now, whether people go see it depends on whether people want to have fun this Christmas or not.”

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story rocks theaters Friday 21.

John C. Reilly, this is your Chicago life