An Honest Conversation About the Fall of Hollywood | Adrian Grenier | EP 445

So I was given a little tip from a mentor who said you have to get in the earth, you have to ground yourself. So I quit everything. I stopped all the distractions and all the indulgences and the escape. I just started meditating and started listening to wiser people than me. I started listening to you and other folks. It's never a good thing. It worked. It worked to some degree, um, but you know, you realize there's so many, um, there's so much information that you can, uh, so much wisdom and education that I hadn't tapped into because I was distracted.

Hey everybody! So I have the privilege today of speaking with Adrien Grenier. He's an American actor, producer, director, and musician, best known for his portrayal of Vincent Chase in the television series "Entourage," which ran from 2004 to 2011. He's appeared in a variety of films: "Drive Me Crazy" in 1999, "The Devil Wears Prada" in 2006, "Trash Fire" in 2016, "Marauders" in 2016. He has an extensive career acting, and so we walked through the development of his career from the time he was a street rat basically in New York City, through his education at LaGuardia High School, where he studied film and acting, and then through his choppy career as an actor, not an all-in actor until the time he signed a contract with "Entourage" and hit the road running. He became spectacularly successful as a consequence of that and had all the opportunities that go along with fame and fortune.

We talked about that, the radical shift that occurred in his life as a consequence of him disappointing the woman that he loved and what that did to him and how that worked out. He's now married, he has a son, he’s made a radical shift in his life. He's running a very interesting long-term experiment; he has some land outside of Boston, about 46 acres. He's trying to learn how to put some of the concerns he had on the environmentalist activist front into actual practice, and he's grown up. That's what we talk about fundamentally: the difference between being immature and being mature and why the latter is actually an improvement.

So where did you grow up, Adrien?

Primarily in New York City, Upper West Side. Yeah, I guess I moved there when I was about four years old. My mom moved me from New Mexico, where I was living with all my cousins and family there, and then she sort of snatched me away and thrust me into the chaos of New York. That's where I spent the rest of my life, from about four to about 40, 42 years old, yeah, slugging it out on the streets of New York.

So what did your mother do?

My mother was a free-flowing flower child of the 60s and 70s. She was, well, she didn't just move to New York; she was really moving away from her situation in New Mexico, which I didn't understand at the time.

Did she move alone?

She moved, yeah, as a single mother.

Okay, were you raised by a single mother?

Correct, yes. Single mother, only child in New York. Now, being a father, I can't imagine what she must have been thinking, but I don't think she was thinking. I think she was just moving. It's a lot of work. Children are a lot of work. It's a hell of a thing to take on by yourself.

So what were you like as a little kid when you moved to New York? What was it like for you?

Yeah, it was rough actually. I was a very, very sensitive kid, sweet, um, I would say kind, gentle, shy.

What sort of school did you go to?

So I would go either to public school or private school depending on whether or not my mother—depending on who my mother was dating. So when she had a rich boyfriend, I'd go to private school, and then when she was with other people, I'd go to public school.

Did you change schools a lot?

Fairly, yeah. I mean, one of my formative years, I went to Rudolph Steiner, which is like a Waldorf school. It was very, very important in my development.

How old were you when you did that?

Second through fourth grade.

And why was that particularly important for you? I presume in a good way.

I think so, yeah. It really, uh, helped define my creativity and like lock in my ability to see the world, you know, not in a structured way but to really expand out into my ability to be creative and nonlinear.

What happened after you went to the Waldorf school?

So then my mom couldn't afford it, so she put—oh no, what it was is the only drawback is they weren't teaching me how to read. So I was in fourth grade, and I still wasn't learning to read. Their philosophy is "they'll learn when they’re ready," and then it'll, you know, really take hold instead of forcing it. So I wasn't learning to read; my mom got nervous. She had a lot of people whispering in her ear, so then she put me into a Catholic school with nuns, and they beat the reading into me hardcore.

So I was there for a year, and I learned to read real quick.

Did you learn to enjoy it?

No, no. I learned, uh, yeah, I mean, it wasn't enjoyable to feel pressured into it. They were pretty aggressive, those nuns, with rulers and stuff.

When did you start acting?

So I actually found acting—well, I didn't grow up with my dad, so I wasn't particularly sporty. I didn't have a lot of that at my disposal. I was actually quite meek. In sports teams, I'd often get bowled over or overlooked or benched. But I found a lot of comfort in the creative arts, in theater. It was about how you were feeling, and it was a lot of camaraderie. You could play in fantasy and put on different costumes and characters, which I took to quite well.

I pursued an after-school program and did that from sixth grade to high school, and then I went to LaGuardia High School, which was one of the specialized public schools in New York, focused on music, art, and performing arts.

So how old were you when you did that?

That was high school, so yeah, um, 16.

Oh, oh I see. Younger.

Okay, yeah. You go in there, and it's when I first started learning how to dress myself. You know, pretty much. You go into high school, and now it's like, "Oh, I can't wear what my mom bought me from the Gap." I got to probably step it up a little bit, be a little cooler.

So you started doing creative work seriously when you were something around 12 or 13. Had you done that before? Because you got into this high school on what basis?

You auditioned so, yeah, monologues, and you know got in. It's hard; there's 3,000 kids or however many kids, and they still are. Is it still a selective school now? Do you know?

It still is, yes.

Yeah, but you know, 30,000 kids from the city audition, and they let in a hundred, so it was pretty competitive, that's for sure.

So what do you think gave you an edge?

I don't know. I always had something, I guess—naturalness, an authenticity. I always move towards being just really honest, so I didn't put on any performance. I was just finding the parts in myself that were true to the material, and I didn't overdo it. So it felt underplayed and real.

What kind of experience did you have acting before you did your auditions?

After-school programs did musical theater. We would put on a show. It was more of an after-school program, not professionally. Although, you know, producers and agents started to sniff around. They started to notice me, and I just always rejected it because I didn't want to be an actor—that's the truth. I didn't want to do it as a profession.

Still resisted to this day!

What did you want to do?

I was more into music, I think, and directing, filmmaking. I loved to—the friends and I in high school, we would make movies, high 8 cameras. You know, you get a camera, and you start filming. You would cut it, you would do all the editing within the camera, you know. Wouldn’t download it to a machine or edit it. You would just say, "Okay, ready, action," and then you do one take. Then you change the angle, and you shoot it in sequence. You edit as you shot, and this was at LaGuardia. My friends and I, that’s what we would do on the weekends. We would make movies, and it didn’t matter if you were holding the camera, or if you were in front of the camera, or if you were holding the boom, or if you were climbing up the side of the building to get the cool shot. You really, um, were able to move throughout all the different roles, and I just loved the process.

So I was always okay with being in front of a camera out of necessity because we were telling a story, but um, I really had, you know, stories that I wanted to tell. So whatever it took to get the job done, I was happy to do it. But being an actor, you know, the ego of wanting to be seen was never really my motivation; it was more just to tell stories.

How is it that you became an actor? What happened? Was that part and parcel of what you learned at LaGuardia?

Well, yeah, I had the skills, the baseline skill, you know, Stanislavski method and all that stuff.

Tell me about the Stanislavski method!

Oh man, if I can remember! I mean, the Stanislavski method was really just about naturalness and being authentic to the circumstances of the material. Right! So you’re trying to make the part your own?

Yeah, finding the parts in you that come alive when you’re, you know, because there's all of every character within us.

Was that explicitly taught at LaGuardia? Like, how do you—?

I don't know how you learn to act. How did you learn to act?

Yeah, we learned techniques. Certainly, we put on scenes, we put on plays, um, at the end of the sec—like the third and fourth year there, you do full plays. But by then, I was really moving towards the music scene.

What did you play?

Self-taught. So I was playing guitar, bass, and you know, eventually started playing drums because I was autodidactic as I had no formal training. I had, you know, no rules, so it was just whatever. It’s rock and roll, so you know, you learn three chords, and you're off to the races.

I was in a band; our band in high school was called the UFOs, the Unidentified Funky Organisms, and it was a lot of fun. I really loved the camaraderie and the immediacy of music, whereas acting, you know, you go and you rehearse and you practice. And then eventually, maybe you get on stage, and there's an immediacy when you're on stage; filmmaking is a lot longer, you know, lead time for your gratification. Right?

Music is like boom! You hit the drum, and people feel it. It’s really present, and I really enjoyed that.

So why did things expand out for you on the acting side rather than, say, on the music side? I mean, I know both of those are unlikely careers.

So I went to college briefly, and I was taking film. They handed me a bunch of books to read, um, on film, and they gave me a camera and said, "Go make a film, come back, and then we’ll critique it." And I was like, "I'm paying you to do that? My friends and I do that! Why would I pay all this money, go into debt for you to tell me what I can do on my own?" I was pretty self-motivated, so I just dropped out of school and just started doing it myself.

This was after LaGuardia?

After LaGuardia. Where did you go to college? And you were there for how long?

A year.

Oh yeah, so you were there for a whole year, but you felt that you could do this essentially on your own or with your friends?

Yes, exactly! Without having to pay for it, right? And it was, you know, it was a lot of money, right? So, but you know, that wasn't the main. That was one of the reasons I dropped out.

The other reason was love. I fell in love with a girl who happened to be living in New York, and I would have just rather hang out with her and spend time with her.

She influenced me to just stay. It was like one night, I was supposed to go back to school, I was in the city, and she said, “Just stay.” I just never went back to school.

Where was the school?

It was just two hours upstate New York.

Okay, okay, I see. But I ended up staying with her, and that’s a whole other story. I mean, lost kid with a girl, it was just pretty destructive relationship.

How old were you then?

17, 18.

Oh yeah, 18.

But once I got out of that, you know, I got my first job.

It was funny, I was living with her. I didn’t expect to tell this story. I was living with her at her parents' house, who had this huge apartment on the east side. It was like Sutton Place; it was like the nicest place in New York. And it was such a big apartment that they didn’t even know I was there!

So we were—how long were you there?

Six months, eight months—long time! Long time!

But it was the housekeeper that kicked me into gear. She said, “What's wrong with you boy? You're a strong young boy. Go out and get yourself a job. I'm not doing your laundry anymore.”

So she basically kicked some sense into me and made me get a job, which was my first job.

Where was your mother in the picture at this point?

I'm sure she was pulling her hair out, not knowing what to do. Poor thing, I feel so bad at that time in her life. I mean, in retrospect, she must have been distraught by my behavior. I dropped out of school, didn't have a job with this girl who's a little bit...

Why did the girl put up with you?

She was troubled. She was more troubled than me, how about that? Okay? And I thought, you know, I thought I could save her, and you know, she could barely save myself in the whole situation.

All right, so this housekeeper gave you a kick.

She did!

Why did you listen to her?

'Cause she was doing my laundry. And I was like, I needed to do something. I think I don't know. I just know that it was time.

There’s always this voice deep down inside saying, "Hey, you know you got to get yourself together.”

But I started waiting tables—typical, you know, starving actor. Although I wasn’t trying to act. But as I was waiting tables, I was very rebellious. I wouldn’t shave. This is back in the 90s, and they didn’t tolerate that at restaurants. Like, you had to be clean shaven. Now it's hip; like hipsters wear beards at, you know, as waiters. Then you had to be clean-shaven. I wouldn’t do it, so the only jobs I ever got were these shitty restaurants that were going out of business or struggling, so I wouldn’t make very much money.

I had a lot of time on my hands to think about my life, and it was in that moment I was like, “I have to make a change. I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life.” And that’s when I found some motivation to try this acting thing.

And so that's when you started attending auditions?

Correct formal auditions, so I called—I don’t know if I had an agent at the time. Maybe I did, but I wasn't—I was blowing off auditions. I was just not motivated. But in this case, I was like, “Okay, I'm getting the next job that I go on. Next audition I'm going to book.” And I did, and that was the first film that I—so how were you spending your—forget about the restaurant jobs—how were you spending your days during that period? What were you actually doing?

Oh, that's—that's dark. You want to go there?

Well, not. I’m curious because, you know, part of what I like to understand about people is how they find their pathway forward, how they find their motivation. You stopped going to school, you were with this girl, you were in love with her, you were hoping that something would come out of that, although that seems not to have made itself manifest.

You were living in her apartment, you ended up with low-paying jobs, beginner jobs. What was going through your mind at the time? Were you angry?

No, I was just romantic. You know, I thought we were going to be in love, and you know, there's this— I guess this starving artist idea, you know? "We have to be living low to the ground, just like finding our food, sleeping in the streets."

You know, there's this sort of a romantic—it was this New York thing. I'm street, you know, I'm living in the streets, and we would hang out in the streets and, you know, find places to drink a beer. Really, and in New York City, there are no parks. I mean, there's Central Park, but you're in Stoops and abandoned buildings, you know, that we'd break into. At this time, it was still the '90s, so it hadn't been completely gentrified yet.

So yeah, there’s a cool factor to it, rock and roll and punk. I met the girl that I'm talking about in a mosh pit at CBGB's when she was like 13; I was like 14, you know? And so that was just the vibe. It was cool!

So it felt like it at least, yeah. Well, maybe it was. I mean, it’s not obvious what you have to go through when you're young to get your head screwed on straight.

Well, it took me 20 more years before I finally did!

Well, congratulations on managing it at all!

Yeah, thank you!

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All right, so you took these restaurant jobs; were they good for anything?

No, no. I just—I had to get out of that. When I booked my first film, that was it! I just started acting, and I was still keeping it pretty humble. I would do a job a year; I’d make more money than I’d ever seen—50 grand, you know, to do a movie. And then I’d just make it last for the year, and I’d still play with the music.

So what was your first movie?

It’s called "The Adventures of Sebastian Cole."

How old were you when you did that?

20, 21.

Yeah, and did you have—did it sound like you had more offers than you took up?

Oh yeah, I screwed up a lot of offers. I could be a lot more famous than I am today, but I just always rejected. There’s something that just didn’t trust Hollywood. I was always like, "It seems shady; it seems shady." And I resisted. I resisted. I resisted.

It wasn't until—and I had opportunities; I did—but I was bike messengering for a while. Like, I would rather do anything than have to act, if I didn’t have to.

What? Well, it's strange. Well, it’s strange in some ways because you obviously have a knack for it; you were rewarded for it when you went into the selective high school. You got parts when you auditioned, so you obviously knew what you were doing.

And even you said that you weren’t necessarily reliable in consequence of the auditions, but the offers kept coming. So it matched your ability.

So what was it about the—well, and even it— I mean, it would even—you would think to some degree it would match the romance too, you know? Because you were, in principle, you had made films; you were a sort of artist on the street.

And so like what the hell was wrong with some success? What was it that stopped you from that, do you think?

Nothing stopped me! I mean, it happened anyway, despite myself! But I was resistant to it, I guess. I did not want to be someone else's pawn, you know? I didn’t want to be someone just like a sort of a vapid shell for someone else to use for their stories.

I had things that I wanted to say. In fact, to just underscore the whole thing, "Entourage," which is what I'm most known for, kept coming at me to come audition, and I kept ignoring it.

And it wasn’t until I was in Mexico on my way to Cuba, I was going to sneak into Cuba to make a documentary about Cuban hip-hop, which I found super interesting at the time. And I had about $1,000 left from the last movie I did six months ago, and I was like, “I could probably make this thousand stretch to make this film, come home, get a job, and then make the movie on the side, or you know, work on the side.”

The documentary?

Yeah! And when I was there, I would visit the internet café. This is back when you know they didn’t have—we didn’t have cell phones and all that jazz. So I’d go to the internet café to check my email every couple of days, and my manager said, “You have to read this! And if you don’t come back to LA to audition, you can find a new manager!”

So essentially he laid down the law. And I knew on some level that if I kept turning my back on Hollywood, it would find another.

When did you go from New York to LA?

I never technically lived in LA. I always stayed in New York; but I did spend a lot of time there shooting film. I kept my residence in New York.

All right, so you were doing sporadic movies, correct? You were obviously successful in that so that people were aware—your name got around. How did you come up on the "Entourage" hit list?

It was indie films, a lot of indie films. Like, Sundance darling, that kind of thing. I did a couple of teenybopper movies, so I had a little bit of clout in Hollywood.

But here's this unique role where someone has to play a celebrity, and all celebrities who would be good for the role are already celebrities and would never do this pilot, which it was at the time, um, or they'd want more money than the budget would account for.

So you had to find someone who embodied, like, who had that celebrity charisma.

There you go, yeah! And I guess part of my nonchalance and me ignoring them made them think, “Who is this guy? He must be something.” Right?

And when my manager sort of put the law down, I said, “Okay, I’ll come.” But can you send me a plane ticket?

He flew me out, and this was what? What year?

How old were you then?

I was about 28.

Okay, and so you spent nine years before you had, what would you say, solid, reliable, continual wealth?

Yes, wealth. Yes! And work! You were working sporadically—a project a year, something like that.

But you know, I lived in an apartment with a bunch of other, you know, roommates, and so I was just living really meek.

And you weren’t interested in money?

No, I mean, I have much more respect for money now! You are definitely a strange actor. You don’t want the spotlight, and you’re not interested in money.

Yeah, so that—that's a hard thing to square with a career in acting. God bless actors! I don’t always get along with them, I think for those reasons, you know? When I—you feel like it's about them and what they want, and they’re the instruments.

Well, they’re the stars, you know? Well, you know, what kind of goes along with the territory? I mean, people in media, people in politics, people in entertainment, they tilt towards narcissism.

I’m not saying that in an insulting way; I mean, every personality constellation has its associated vices, you know? And if you’re going to want to be on camera, if you’re going to want to be around people, that’s one of the things that tilts you in the direction of it being about you.

And if you're a charismatic personality and you're an actor, you're going to attract people around you who facilitate that development, let's say. And so it’s part and parcel of the territory, but you're not really temperamentally like that.

Oh, I cultivated my narcissism!

Okay, yeah, yeah! No, I definitely found that part within me that was the character Vince, and I, you know, C, you know, they say actors get lost in their characters, right?

Yeah, and I did!

And how long did "Entourage" run?

Ten years.

Right, right, so that's a very major chunk of time.

Oh yeah, yeah!

Well, so walk me through that. So you got your plane ticket, you went out to LA. What happened then?

Got the part! When my manager found out that I got the part, he walked in the room, and I had no place to stay. I had no car. So I’m in his office checking my email again, and he walks in, and he was the first person to call me Vince.

I knew I got the part, and I hung my head because I knew it was going to totally change my life in ways that I didn't know if I really wanted. And I knew that I was going to have to commit to this because he used to tell me, "You don’t even know what you don’t know! You're going to have access and women and money—all these things.”

He was managing other famous people, so he understood, and he's like, "You don’t even know! You want it, but when you get it, you'll know you want it. You know it’s great!"

And it was going to change my life, because it's a commitment. When you audition for something like that, you have to sign a six-year contract.

Right! So you're already committed before they even give you the role. And it did; it changed my life entirely! I had to learn to be that celebrity or my own version, my own expression of that celebrity.

And then with the success of the show and the popularity of the characters, people would come up to me and you know, instant approval; instant! You walk into a room, and you know, "Yay!" you get that attention, that just acceptance.

Had that happened to you at all before? I mean, you’d had some success as an actor before that but not—not like that?

Oh, totally different! Yeah, I mean, and you were so—you were about 28, you said when this hit?

28, 27, 28!

Okay, so you’re not a kid when this happened.

So that's something! So, all right, so now you have what? You said instant accessibility, instant approval?

MH, right! Tell me about the character that you played and how that tangled up into that.

Yeah, so Vince is a celebrity who's, you know, very very nonchalant. And you know the whole, um, the whole theme is if this doesn’t work out—if all the fame and fortune doesn’t work out, “I can always move back to Queens!”

So it was like a perfect—talk about typecast, right? I mean, all the characters.

That was very strange; we're all New York kids, and you know, and we were all very well-cast, you know?

But I think that's partly—they were writing the character to reflect me.

Oh yeah, okay! And partly that was the character that was—because, right?

So that's fun, trying to distinguish your actual life from your role.

It was more fun to blur the lines, um, because you start to accustom to people wanting you to be the character. "Oh, do shots with us!"

Right! Like, "Yeah, okay! I’ll you know, do some shots with these guys," and I like people.

So yeah, and then you know then there’s the pitfalls and the women. And the, you know, and I started to believe that that was the way it’s supposed to be, right?

You mean supposed to be—meaning success? Vince gets all the girls and the money and the power and the fame and um, and that was appropriate and good and as his star rose, my star rose. It just became easier and easier to say yes to the indulgences, and I got really good at it, whereas before I was leery of it.

Yeah, you allow yourself to enjoy it, um, it becomes easy to say yes, especially when it’s justified.

Well, you’re the celebrity, of course! You know, you get the accolades. You must know a little bit about that yourself. I mean, all this happened to me when I was pretty old.

Oh right! So, I mean, I was laboring under some degree of obscurity till I was about 50, you know, 53, 54, so you know, I was already fairly cemented into place by the time I—

That's right!

Right! Right! And you know, I have a very tight family and a very tight network of friends, and so that's also made a substantial difference to me.

I don't know what it would have been like to have encountered that sort of thing when I was much younger. I mean, I probably would have been wild, especially if I would have done it before I quit drinking.

So I quit drinking when I was about 25, 26, something like that, you know? And that straightens out your life pretty radically. But I was pretty wild, you know, when I was drinking.

So growing up in New York, there's a little bit of nihilism—godless, you know? And this was now the overlay of my ego, which was “See, you know, I am the man! I—you know, I got the part, and people are, you know, approving of me.”

Yeah, so it just—and it’s a very difficult thing. I mean, I don’t know exactly how it is that you can resist—part of being socialized is to pay attention to what others think of you. Right?

I mean, that’s part of being in the loop for accepting social feedback?

And normally, you know, you’re not carried around on the shoulders of others constantly, but you found yourself in that situation. Essentially, it’s like, it isn’t obvious to me how people can withstand that.

I've talked to Russell Brand a little bit about that, because he was spectacularly successful and also, you know, um, what would you say? In the market for whatever repetitive urges might make themselves manifest.

And so, you know, he's talked to me a little bit about that, and he paid a—I would say a relatively heavy price for that. He and I might have been friends if we weren't competing for the same chicks!

Did you know him in—did you know him in LA?

We crossed paths a few times.

All right, so now you're in LA. Now, this is very interesting; you resisted this, and now you—you were spending your primary amount of time in LA when "Entourage" was six, eight months a year?

I would go back to New York. By the way, you didn’t have a house in LA?

I had a house, but that I stayed when I was there.

Yeah, okay, okay! I kept my New York address and I got mail there and my bills there. So funny enough, like, I actually made a documentary.

So, I simultaneously—while I'm on this ride and I'm finding more and more excuses to indulge and enjoy the lifestyle, I was maintaining a sense of my goodness by doing environmental work and starting charities and making documentaries.

I still had a band the whole time. In fact, the band really got popular after that even though we might not have deserved it otherwise.

I still had my other life which kept me feeling like I was not swept up in that whole thing.

Right, right! But not really recognizing how much I really was, you know, captured.

Okay, so then, so why not be captured? I mean, you were successful; you got the part. The part was successful; the series was successful, and you have these things that are laid at your feet.

So what's the problem with indulging it? You know, I thought I was going to live my whole life in that lifestyle, and I couldn’t figure out a way. My logic mind could not understand why I would do it any other way.

Yeah, um, I didn’t, I didn’t believe—I didn't believe in God. I didn’t, you know, I was open and poly and, you know, liberal, and I thought I was a good person. I really did.

It wasn’t until I was in my 40s, and the love of my life, who I was dating at the time, dumped me.

And she, in no uncertain terms, said, "You are the worst. You know, you need to look at—and she gave me a list!"

She even did—she was a—you know, she was thorough; she was nice enough to give me a list.

"Take a look at how you're drinking. Take a look at how you're using sex. Take a look at all these things. See, I lose my number!"

And it was almost like a glitch in the Matrix. I was like, "you know, for a second," I was like, "What?" There was something off; like how is it that this girl—she was young, you know?

And she—didn't like here I am, the powerful, rich, famous person who is justified in everything I'm doing because I also do charity, and she's leaving me.

I could give her everything—access. We could fly; PL can do everything, go around the world—anything! And she’s leaving me!

So that was like weird, but I was like, "All right, I’ll find another girl, not a problem." But it stayed with me, and because I loved her and respected her so much.

Why did you respect her?

'Cause I knew I knew that she was honest, and I knew that she was—she wanted what’s best for me.

I see, so she actually loved you?

Yeah, oh, well that’s annoying!

Yeah, and it stayed with me. And, um, and you said that the charity work you did and so forth—that you’re implying that at least in part that that was an—what would you say? A moral flag to fly while you're living an immoral life?

Yeah, yeah, um! Did you know that at the time?

No! I literally—I legitimately believed that I'm glad that I'm the famous person with the access and the money because I can actually make the world a better place because I have a good heart, yeah?

And I think this is like my mother telling me, "Oh, you're a good, you know?" That's a whole another sidetrack! But you know, moms that love their kids—they tell them they’re good.

And no one ever told me that I was bad or that I could be, so I never really got to connect into the part of me that was treacherous and destructive and selfish.

I always just imagined—and this girl, she alerted you to that?

Oh yeah, yeah!

And did that happen be—like were there hints of that before the breakup?

There was a looming dread in my life. Like, life is perfect—wait a minute! Why is my life perfect? There’s nothing wrong with my life.

Like the—I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop, I’m like, "Well, is it death? Is that what I’m just afraid of? Or is there—what is it?" There’s something that I’m not connecting into, and quite frankly, um, I mean, I was all head. I was all intellect and groin.

As all head and like I didn’t have any feeling in here. I didn’t have any intuition. I was totally disconnected from—

Now you tied that, at least provisionally, to your mother’s insistence that you were essentially good.

Right! So you hadn't been called on your misbehavior.

Well, I think that when I was younger, there were some traumatic things that happened to me that were so painful that sort of dissociated, and I decided I didn’t want to feel anymore.

This is what I've come to realize when I've now later in life after taking my ex, now ex-girlfriend’s list and then starting to investigate.

So what I did was a hard thing; I cut out all of the distractions, all of the addictions and consumptions and you know—no alcohol, no sex. You know, I was celibate for a long time.

Basically, removing everything that was keeping me, you know, my dopamine hits high.

Yeah! Were you still working on "Entourage" during this time?

No, no, so that this was after that came to an end.

Yes! Were you involved in any other acting endeavors at that time?

No, in fact I quit acting during this period!

Uh-huh!

I called my agent, and I said, "I need some time to figure some stuff out, so I don’t want you to waste your time putting me up for things. I’m just not going to work for a while."

My agent burst into tears because it was like, "Who am I now? What am I?"

Right, and that began a multi-year process of me—well, first of all, you know, cutting out all the distractions enough for me to see what was going on inside and, um, grounding; come down to earth and start to realize that I had a lot of pain.

I had a lot of childhood trauma that I was not—you know, that I—that was metastasized inside of me, and that really began my steps towards I think growing up.

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And so what did that look like, growing up, as far as you're concerned? What changed? I mean, you said you started to cut out the distractions, the addictions, the immediate pleasures.

Yes, and you did that at least in part because of the list this girl left you.

Mhm, yeah, yeah. Well, she was very explicit. She’s a smart, intuitive woman, so she knew exactly where I should look.

So she gave me a map, and I started to look, and she was right, you know? And it was just opening up the door, though, and then the path was long, deep, and dark.

I mean, it went to, you know, multi-year dark night of the soul, and you know, had to come out the other end awkwardly and finding, you know, a new way of being in the world without all of the—

Yeah, and so what did that new way involve? What changed? I mean, I know you stopped—like there are the things you stopped doing.

Yeah.

But that just leaves—well, that leaves an emptiness in your life. I mean, that’s the problem with cutting out anything that’s, let's call it addictive.

It's like, well that’s how you spend your time, so now you stop doing that; you don't even have the same friends anymore. So what I realized is I didn’t want to die alone. I wanted a family!

Uh-huh!

I wanted partnership. I wanted to have children!

How come you hadn’t known that before?

My dad left.

Yeah, um, I didn’t, you know, life is scary! Life is upsetting! I didn’t believe that that was an honorable pursuit.

I thought it was a tragic pursuit! I didn’t think I could be a good father.

Oh, I see!

I didn't know if I was going to be able to be there for my kid, and right—

And yeah, well, you would have that doubt if your father left because how the hell would you know? You didn’t have the model; in fact, you have the reverse model!

Well, and I was selfish too! Like I really just wanted pleasure. I was hedonistic; I was seeking, you know, the next hit, you know, and not—I was still an adolescent punk.

Yeah! I was still that punk from the streets!

Yeah, yeah, um, just with more stuff and more opportunity!

Right, right, right!

Yeah, which isn’t necessarily an advantage if the path you’re on is like scattering you everywhere.

Yeah, all right! So how long did you spend sorting yourself out?

Two, two and a half years.

I—I confronted a lot, and I realized that I was given a little tip from a healer, from a mentor who said, “You have to get in the earth; you have to ground yourself—like be in the soil.”

And she—I was like, all right. So what I did, I actually had a place here in Austin on the east side. I had a little bungalow with a little camper.

So I quit everything; I stopped all the distractions and all the indulgences and the escape, and I just started meditating and started listening to wiser people than me.

I started listening to you and other folks; I’ve never had a good thing! It worked. It worked to some degree, um, but you know, you realize there’s so many um, there’s so much information that that you can, uh, so much wisdom and and and education that that I hadn’t tapped into because I was distracted.

So I was seeking advice from elders and counsel from friends and and starting to orient myself with people who I saw as having lived—a life that I think that I might want.

So I changed my friend group and just started DMing them, and luckily for me, because I'm somewhat famous, people would respond!

And anyway, this one woman, she said, “You need to ground yourself and get in the earth.”

So what I did is I moved into my camper, and I lived there for a year—a small little 50 square foot camper, whatever it was.

And I started building a community garden, and I was just digging in the soil, planting and digging, and working, meditating and cooking over an open fire.

And people—I grew a beard!

And then the pandemic hit, and I was like "Perfect!" Like, I'm already, you know, solo in isolation! It didn't—it didn’t affect me at all; it didn’t change anything!

I just kept doing the work, kept doing the work, got really healthy, worked out, and um, it worked!

I mean the grounding was profound, and that’s when I realized that I wanted to change my whole life to be closer to nature.

All this environmental activism that I was doing, this legislation and hearts and minds and you know, consumer behavior—all that stuff that I was doing, un-environment ambassador, all that stuff was just so out there.

It was like outside of myself. What I wanted to do was just do the work!

Like be, learn the skills to actually support the earth, like right here, right now!

You know, I realized how much I didn’t respect and appreciate what farmers do, and I was like, “I want them to make all these changes for the environment, but I don’t even understand what they do, why they do what they do, and why they would choose one thing over another.”

So I said, "This is what I’m doing! I’m going to—I’m going to be the one that knows about farming. I’m going to be the one that knows how to grow food and build a skill so that I can feed myself, I can feed my family, take care of myself and my family."

And what was happening on the romantic side during this period?

Utterly alone, sad, lonely! And by the way, like I, you know, cut out porn and you know, no masturbation. So I didn’t even have that, you know. I’m sitting there just with myself.

And you know, I knew that was a big distraction as well.

Yeah, why’d you stick with it?

Well, so there was one time I was—I think I was going to Can or something—the Cannes Film Festival, and I hitched a ride on this billionaire’s private plane.

And he was 80; he was old and gray hair, and he gets on the plane, and he has like six hot young models with him.

At the my—me, my mentality at the time, I was like, “Damn! This guy is the man! Look at him! He’s 80, and he’s still got it!”

And there was just a little voice in my head: "I hope I can still do that when I’m his age!"

A little voice.

And then I realized, "Adrien! You do whatever you want! Whatever you say happens! You can manifest, you know?"

You know that you will have that! And it like really shuttered me, I was like, "Holy wait a minute! I don’t want that!"

I realized in that moment, I was like, "That’s exactly what I don’t want!"

And so I started to rewrite what I actually—

Why did you figure that out? Like, I mean, you said you know your first impression was, it’s like Hugh Hefner and his blonde chicks going around Europe—I mean, what fun for everyone!

I watched that show a couple of times, and I thought, "Might have been on that episode!"

Yeah, well, it seemed like a pretty disable form of hell to me, so—

Right!

Well, why?

None of it’s real! I guess that’s the fundamental issue is none of it’s real! There’s—and maybe that’s part of that longing that you described for a long-term relationship, for kids.

Yeah, I wrestled with these questions. I was like, "What do I really want? Why do I want it?"

And you know, pushing up against my impulses, my instincts, the carnal part of me that wanted me to keep doing the same things.

But as I started to re—you know what it was also? I wanted to protect and take care of!

I wanted to be a protector! I didn’t want to be the one that’s—

That's a really different role than user!

Yeah, yeah, and and because this is coming off of the inspiration that my ex-girlfriend gave me, which was, “Take a look at yourself! You’ve hurt me!”

And I saw her tears; I saw the pain that I caused her. And when I got over the fact I like, "You know, you made your choices!"

Yeah, you chose to be with me. I told you who I was! Right?

When I started to realize that I was not taking care of her and that I was actively hurting her, I didn’t want to be that person.

Mhm! And then when I finally had an awakening, like I mean, does she know that all this happened to you in the aftermath of her note?

She does!

Are you still in touch?

We are, yeah.

Is she married?

She is!

Does she have kids?

She does! We both happen to have a kid with the same name.

Oh!

Hm, so, okay, so run me up into that? You obviously met someone?

Well, her son is my son, so we ended up getting back together.

Oh, you did!

Yeah.

Oh! Hm!

How long did that take?

It took a long time!

It took a long time, so I had to, you know, I had to become a new thing, a new person, totally change everything, and then I had to convince her that I had changed.

How much age difference is there between you?

18, 17 years!

I see, okay, yeah.

And she wasn’t having—I mean, she was like, “Yeah, right!”

You know?

Yeah, right!

Yeah, well that sort of changed—that’s a lot of change!

Yeah, yeah!

And this was during the pandemic, and she was in Europe, and I had to pull a lot of strings to like get to see her and she was at arm’s length for a long time, and I had to consistently show up as the new me.

Mhm!

While she's poking and prying me, making sure that—how long did you have to do that?

A year and a half!

Yeah, you know, and so she put you through your paces!

Well, and also, I'm like, I'm not dating anyone; I'm not distracted. I will spare no expense, and I will take as long as it takes for us to heal without any expectation that we're going to, you know, be together.

And keep in mind, like I've been celibate for, you know, almost a year or eight months, and then when we’re with her she’s like, “Okay, well you know, if you're going to be dating anyone, I don’t want to even talk to you.”

I was like, “All right!”

So I basically had to double down until we, you know, many years many months later, finally had some breakthroughs and I wasn’t expecting to be back with her, but we—we fell in love again anew!

This is in Portugal?

Yeah!

And that was just the beginning of a new romance, and um, and she tested me and and I was struggling still because it hadn’t really—it was new!

I was like a toddler trying to walk for the first time, you know?

And then eventually, um, she moved to Austin, and then we—I told her I wanted to buy some land.

I wanted to do this life, and I’ve been holding off. I’ve been waiting to move into land until my partner showed up in my life so that we could make that choice together, so that it would be ours as opposed to the old dynamic was look, “This is my life and you can enter it, but like I hold all the cards and it’s all my stuff and you’re just, you know, lucky to be here.”

Right, right!

This is now ours! And when she came to Austin, it clicked!

They started clicking! I was definitely on the right path because everything was just unfolding in such serendipity.

We went and found a piece of land; it was beautiful. She fell in love with it, I fell in love with it, and then, you know, now we've been—we’ve been back together for three and a half years, got married, and we have a kid.

How old is your child?

Almost one—11 months!

What’s that been like? Are you happy about that?

How are you as a father?

Huh?

How are you as a father?

I'm a great father!

How come?

Because I’m in service.

Yeah, yeah! And that’s a good deal! I’m here! I’ve designed my life so that I could be there with him and with her, and so reimagined what my life could be.

And it’s on land! We have 46 acres! We’re building a little nature community.

We have a number of homes; we’re inviting people to live there. We have agriculture projects that are all supporting, you know, the whole project, and I get to do that work every day.

So it keeps me grounded.

What kind of work do you do?

Learning all the skills, or trying to learn. I’m certainly definitely still an apprentice of the land.

I’m, you know, I’m spent 40-something years in New York, and now I’m just trying to keep things alive!

Learning, you know, about, you know, the snakes and how to wrangle them and not try to kill everything that scares me, but try and move against it and um, be brave in those moments and and fail and still keep at it!

And all my mentors and farmers—mentors and friends are farmers, so I just, you know, sent a bunch of texts this morning like, "Hey, there’s a storm coming! You know, should we prepare? Like, you know, what should we do?"

And just getting a lot of advice!

And by the way, these farmers are dying; they’re desperate for young people to care about what they’re doing! They’re looking for someone to pass down their knowledge and their wisdom.

There’s just not a lot of people who are wanting to do that. Everyone wants to move to the cities and be fancy or something.

So it just feels good—the fathers I never had are in the—all the older men that are now my mentors—homesteaders and farmers! So what do I do now?

I work the land and build this community.

So what does a typical day look like?

Well, you wake up! I usually take Seiko in the morning, my son, and we go out on the land, he and I.

Let out the ducks, take the dogs and make, you know, take them for a walk, and he and I spend some time together until my wife wakes up, and then she takes over!

And then I work with Ben, who works on the land, and we, we have our little laboratory, what I call it, sort of our place to experiment.

We have a food forest and grapes; we’re making some wine and an annual garden food—some animals, feed the animals.

And then also, I get to still be creative because I get to tell the story, so I have a channel called Earth Speaks.

So we’re telling stories from the land, and um, that's—is that a YouTube channel? How does that work?

YouTube, Instagram!

Yeah, yeah, okay, okay! But continuing to tell stories as a filmmaker, I’m making a documentary right now, um, so I get to both be present, be with my family, I get to continue my work, grounding myself into hard skills, primitive skills of survival and protection um, and you know forget the philosophy.

Where I think that we should all be a little bit closer to nature and closer to each other in community.

It’s just I get to build that and build that model that maybe will serve my local community and might be a model for others to replicate someday.

So where’s your land?

Just outside of Austin.

How far out?

30 minutes!

And is it near—is it near a town?

Is it truly rural?

I don’t tell people where it is! We have had—I’m still famous! We still—we have had some stalkers, but um, it’s a cute little—there’s a lot of really cute historic towns in Texas, so we have a historic town, uh, which is a 30-minute float down the Colorado River, and um, we have springs, and we get to see it because there’s a lot of development out there, so there’s a lot of tracked homes, HOAs coming in and just clear-cutting everything and then putting all these generic houses.

So we get to actually preserve and um, steward that land as it’s meant to be, you know, with as natural as—

And so how long have you had this piece of land?

Three years.

Uh-huh!

So, so that’s starting to be a reasonable length of time. How’s your how does your wife feel about all this?

She is she happy with you?

Yes, she is!

She is, yeah, finally! She's, you know, and she and I get to now, um, sit with her as she um, heals the deeper layers of of herself, you know, because these, you know, women in our culture, they’re on guard, you know?

And there’s not a lot of valiant men holding space for them to be able to do the healing that they need to do, and that’s my biggest honor is that I get to hold space for her to be the best mom she can be for my son.

More kids on the horizon?

Oh yeah!

Oh yeah!

Right, so that’s a plan, and that's a real possibility?

Yeah!

Well, congratulations!

Thank you; that’s a good deal!

Yeah, thanks!

Yeah, well look, that’s—that’s an hour! That’s a good place to end!

For everybody watching and listening, I’m going to continue this conversation with Adrien on The Daily W side for another half an hour.

I think I’ll talk to him more about what he’s doing with the land and what—the why that’s useful, why that’s different from what he did on the environmentalist side, um, why he finds it preferable to his old life.

So if you’re inclined to accompany us on that journey, then jump on over to the Daily W side of things.

It’s, I suppose, useful to throw them the bone of your support in any case because they make these podcasts possible, and they’re, uh, pretty decent fighters on the side of free speech.

So that’s my pitch for the Daily Wire for today. Thank you very much to the film crew here in Austin because that's where we are today. Thank you very much, sir, for that; that was a lot.

That was a lot to walk through; much appreciated.

And so everybody, you can join us on the Daily Wire side and otherwise, we’ll see you soon.