Apparently, being world-famous and having a lead role on one of the biggest TV shows of all time isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
David Schwimmer, who played the awkward-yet-charming Ross Geller on Friends, said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that his quick fame nearly ruined his personal life.
“It was pretty jarring and it messed with my relationship to other people in a way that took years, I think, for me to kind of adjust to and become comfortable with,” Schwimmer, 49, said. “As an actor, the way I was trained, my job was to observe life and to observe other people, and so I used to walk around with my head up, and really engaged and watching people.”
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“The effect of celebrity was the absolute opposite,” he continued. “It made me want to hide under a baseball cap, not be seen. And I realized after a while that I was no longer watching people; I was trying to hide. So I was trying to figure out: How do I be an actor in this new world, in this new situation? How do I do my job? So that was tricky.”
Schwimmer played the lovable Ross for 10 years, and he believes that because of the longevity of his role, viewers felt like they “knew” him as Ross, not as himself.
“Because you’re in their home, there’s something very approachable about actors on television, and I think especially in a half-hour comedy, where there’s something very comforting about it,” he said. “In our show I’m the same guy for 10 years, you can rely on me to be a certain way and you know me — or you think you know me.”
By the end of the show’s run, each of Friends main cast members — Schwimmer, Jennifer Aniston, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, Courteney Cox, and Lisa Kudrow — were raking in $1 million USD per episode.
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After the show ended in 2004, Schwimmer moved on to various roles, and even took on directing. His recent turn as Robert Kardashian on The People vs. O.J. Simpson earned him his second Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series.
His first Emmy nomination was in 1995 for that little Ross role on Friends, for Outstanding Supporting Actor.