Piven is best known for is his award-winning performance on the HBO series Entourage and for appearances in movies including Very Bad Things. Credit: Frankie Leal

Actor and comedian Jeremy Piven has been entertaining audiences for most of his life. His late parents were stage actors, so he found his way into the spotlight at a young age.

“The reality is, I’ve been on stage since I was 8 years old,” Piven, 59, told the Current during a recent interview. “I’ve been doing comedy ever since — in one way or another.”

Some of the comedy work Piven is best known for is his award-winning performance on the HBO series Entourage, and for movies including Very Bad Things, Old School and Smokin’ Aces.

Along with his career in TV and film, Piven has been performing as a stand-up comedian for eight years. He’ll take the stage at the Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club Feb. 21-22. Friday’s shows are at 7:30 p.m. and 9:45 p.m., and Saturday’s are at 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.

During our interview, Piven talked about his relationship with comedy, his mother’s impact on his career and his experience working with filmmaker Robert Rodriguez, a San Antonio native.

You’ve been in the entertainment industry for nearly 40 years. How has your sense of humor changed since you started?

The great thing about stand-up is that it trains your brain to think in terms of finding the funny in any situation and, in a weird way, without sounding pretentious. I think that that’s a very healthy way to live. It’s very easy to get caught up in our feelings. For so many years, I really didn’t necessarily see life as a comedy. We have to see it that way. We have to be able to laugh at ourselves.

It sounds like your relationship with comedy has evolved a lot.

Listen, I can be a very serious person and very emotionally available. I think it’s part of what makes me an actor. That’s one of the dualities about artists. I think we are misunderstood because we seem like little bitches. The reality is that we are very vulnerable people. We feel everything. We’re asked to turn it on and connect with that vulnerability and then turn it off immediately. It’s not that easy. One of the great ways to do that is through humor. That’s why I love stand-up comedy.

I saw a video of you doing stand-up for the first time way back in 2008, but you really didn’t start taking it seriously until a few years ago, right?

I’m going to be very honest with you, since my mother, Joyce Piven, passed away last week, I don’t have the energy to kind of dance around anything. I’m just going to give it to you straight. I’m not interested in timelines. All that does is create certain expectations. In the early ’90s, I started professionally doing sketch comedy with Chris Farley at Second City. It’s very hard to categorize me as a stand-up for the amount of time I’ve been doing it.

I didn’t know about your mother. My condolences. I saw an interview with you where you described yourself as a mama’s boy, so I’m sure it’s been difficult.

I am a mama’s boy. I was lucky. There’s no love like a mother’s love. She was an incredible human being. [Our family] was broke, but I thought I was the richest kid on the block because I got to get up on stage and perform and make people laugh. My parents would say, “You can say whatever you want as long as it’s funny” and “remember you are enough.” That was so empowering as a kid. I owe everything to them.

You’ve worked on a couple of movies with director Robert Rodriguez, who is originally from San Antonio. What makes him a special filmmaker?

It’s time that we all celebrate our guy. He posted up in Austin before it was popular. He created his own little corner of the world where he had his autonomy and could create anything he wanted in his studio. He’s a true maverick, is wildly prolific and has figured out a way to navigate creatively on the highest level without being subservient to other influences. He’s a really fascinating dude.

Do you have any insight into your movie All-Star Weekend, which was originally supposed to be released in 2018? I know it was delayed because Robert Downey Jr. plays a Mexican man in it.

That’s a question for [the film’s director] Jamie Foxx. I ran into him recently. He’s someone that has a new perspective on life … because he had a near-death experience. [All-Star Weekend] was something he wrote and directed. It’s an incredible cast with the two of us, Eva Longoria, Gerard Butler, Robert Downey Jr. and Benicio del Toro. I think Jamie’s been sitting on it long enough.

$60 (table for two) and up, Friday-Saturday Feb. 21-22, Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club, 618 NW Loop 410, (210) 541-8805, improvtx.com.

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This article appears in Feb 5-18, 2025.