Jeff Goldblum is well known for playing a wealth and variety of characters, appearing in such films as The Fly, Jurassic Park, and Independence Day, just to name a few.  With well over eighty roles under his belt, Goldblum has quite the resume.  A jack of many trades, he also produced his own film, Pittsburgh, as well as the movie Perfume, and also directed Little Surprises.

Goldblum recently joined the cast of Law & Order:  Criminal Intent as the character Detective Zach Nichols.

Goldblum was interested in acting even at a very young age.  “I always wanted to do it [acting]; my parents took us to see some children’s theater I remember, early on at the Pittsburgh Playhouse.  Even though I was very little I got kind of the bug.  I was very excited being around theater and wondered, ‘What are those actors doing backstage,’ and I was very excited about it. 

And then there’s this thing in Pittsburgh, I think it’s still going on.  It’s at Chatham - Music Day Camp it’s called; in the summers for six weeks between fifth and sixth grades and another year, maybe the year before that, too, during the summers I had the most magical time ever going to this thing and going from softball to arts and crafts and piano.  I already had started playing piano then [for] this drama course.  At the end of this drama course actually I took part in this recital and my father, my parents had already wisely said if you find something you love to do that might be a key to your vocation.  After this show they cast me as this kind of lead in this funny little show and after that I had such an exhilarating time of it I remember, they were there.  They said, “How did you like that?”  I was like, “Yes, that was really something,” and I kept it secret to myself just how much I loved it, but I think from that time on around fifth grade I thought to myself, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ 

Then between ninth and tenth and tenth and eleventh grades I went to Carnegie Mellon University and they had six-week sessions for people and I remember looking through the catalog with my parents.  They said, “What do you want to do?”  There was art and I had painted and taken some art classes and had some talent in that.  And I was playing piano.  They said, “What do you want to do, this music program here?  Do you want to do the art program?”  I was like, “What if I did the one for actors?”  It had kind of been a secret.

And so I did that, fell wildly more in love, several steps down the road in my soul and heart and blood and system toward being obsessed with and convinced and passionate about being an actor.  That kind of stuck and then right after high school I went to New York when I was still 17, just before I turned 18 and joined the Neighborhood Playhouse with Sandy Meisner, the great acting teacher, where he was still teaching.  That’s how it all started.  I started to do plays and movies and like that.”

Goldblum loves many of his roles and especially enjoys the development stage.  “Maybe it’s because I’m trying to get better and I feel like I am, but I currently am pretty in love with this part that I’m doing now (Zach Nichols, Law & Order:  Criminal Intent)…I like the parts when they’re at the stage of development, so I’m doing a couple more movies right after this, this summer, one called The Baster with Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman, and I’m at the stage where I’m rehearsing it and trying to figure out who the character is and what the part is, and I kind of love that.  And then I’m doing this movie with Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton and Rachel McAdams called Morning Glory right after that, and I’m a bit in love with that.  I think you have to be.  That’s part of the criteria and qualification for taking a part.  It has to be a passion and something you’re in love with.

But besides that, having said all that, I did love very much Adam Resurrected that I did this last year with Paul Schrader directing, that Willem Dafoe was in, and it was a wonderful movie and experience for me.  I loved doing that movie, Pittsburgh, that I think you can still get on NetFlix, a very handcrafted affair that I sort of cooked up over several years.  Besides that, holy cats, many things that I could think of, but those are a few that come to mind.”

The actor recently starred in a short lived series on NBC, Raines.  The show was cancelled after only seven episodes, but Goldblum still holds a positive outlook.  “I have a philosophical approach that allows me here and there to be satisfied with whatever happens, believe it or not.  Yes, I have my ups and downs and I can be disappointed in one thing or another, but generally speaking whatever happens I will mostly, and you can, it’s not strange to think to look at my life and go, “You’re a lucky guy,” and to mostly feel incredibly grateful. So even during a period when for instance Raines came and Raines went, I just felt incredibly grateful.  If they had told me in fact that Raines would have been a six, seven-part miniseries I probably would have signed up and been very happy to do it like that too.  I would have been very happy.  But I’m always interested in the unexpected and know that things, especially in show business, but in life generally, are inevitably fleeting to one extent.  It may be short, it may be long, but there’s no such thing as long.  I think all of life is a fleeting proposition, so I’m sort of happy with whatever comes and goes in fact.  And I think in loss and in the goings is sometimes the greatest opportunity for expansion.

Anyway, in another way it did give me, it whet my appetite for more cop parts, it’s true, and even before I did Raines I did this … show called The Pillow Man, where I played a detective, a homicide detective in fact.  And I had a great time doing that.  It was this Mike McDonough play and I was in it with Billy Crudup and Zeljko Ivanek and we had a great time for six months at the Booth Theater in New York.  After that I was still very appetized when Raines came along, and after Raines, to do this, and there was sort of some kind of appetizing continuum for me in those things, that’s right.”

Goldblum currently stars in USA Networks Law & Order:  Criminal Intent, in which he not only gets to show off his dramatic acting chops but also his dry sense of humor.  “Maybe I’m funny sometimes, maybe not so funny other times...They actually write [the humor], Dick Wolf has been fantastic, kind, cordial, and brilliant, I think.  And they have a brilliant staff of writers and producers and they have intendingly built a part that is suited for some of the things that I like to do and can do.  That’s what they’ve tried to do and after seeing the first episode that was aired I think there’s some humor in there.  Along with the solving the crime and the very passionate part of this character and serious part of the character, I think there’s some humor in it; I’m enjoying some of the funny parts of it.”

Goldblum also gets to show off his musical skills in Law & Order:  Criminal Intent.  “I don’t know how skilled I am, but I did take lessons.  Our parents gave us music lessons early on in Pittsburgh and I took to it and loved it.  I kind of guess it’s a hobby of mine.  I’ve always played piano…I decided on being an actor, I played the ragged cocktail lounges here and there, a couple of jobs while I was still in high school in Pittsburgh, and then have always had a piano where I am, where I live, and now where I work too.  I just love to play all the time.  For the last several years I’ve had a jazz band called the Mildred Spitzer Orchestra in Los Angeles and when I’m off work we book ourselves into places and play gigs around town. 

…They knew about it a little bit and worked it into the character so my character, Detective Nichols, is able to play a bit and in these couple episodes, one that you saw already, maybe that first episode, and there’s another one where I play…I’m not particularly nervous.  I get excited and I got excited about it, but I always was sort of thrilled to play.  Even when I play gigs these days I have no career aspirations or no fear of criticism.  I really do it because I love to do it.  Whenever I do it I love to do it, so it was particularly enjoyable for me having it be part of a scene or two.”

Goldblum has often had roles involved with crime stories, and thinks that it might have been beneficial to meet Zach Nichols if he were a real person.  “…I’ve always been involved with crime stories and if I had been, for instance 20 years ago not inconceivably involved in a part where I might have been playing a detective like this I would have been very interested to talk to Zach Nichols, who’s ostensibly a real and a uniquely brilliant detective, for research purposes.

Here on our set, Criminal Intent we’ve got a guy like that, so the current Jeff Goldblum can talk to this fellow Mike Struck who’s a brilliant real-life detective.  I love hearing all his stories and he’s on the set when we do our stories here and he tells us what’s real and if he were playing the part and he were in the actual situation what he’d be thinking, what he’d be doing, how he’d be doing it, and that’s thrilling and fascinating to me.  So that’s how I can imagine Jeff Goldblum of yore talking to Zach Nichols if he were real.” 

Jeff Goldblum loves what he does and encourages others, as well as gives them advice on acting.  “I teach…I’m a humble student of acting myself and part of that studentship is teaching, in fact, I feel like I learn a lot from it.  I just love doing it; I could teach every day.  I haven’t done it for a while, because I’ve been working so often, but one of the things I feel like is relevant and practical to tell my students sometimes, and anybody interested in getting into it, is to, well I like what Stanislavski said.  He said, “Love the art in yourself; not yourself in art.” 

So in fact you can begin to discover and investigate whether you are an actor or not, whether you’re in my view, qualified for a life in this profession or in this endeavor by checking yourself out and acting every day, getting plays and scripts, and getting together with people and divvying up the parts and acting in one way or another, or writing things.  But an actor wants to get up every day and they can’t think of anything particularly more fun to do than getting into a made-up situation and living it out as if it’s real.  And having people watch it perhaps and thereby telling those people a story, by acting out these characters in a story.  That’s what actors want to do; they don’t necessarily want to be famous or rich or anything else.  It’s a very bad gamble if that’s what you’re after.  But if your heart is wildly in it so that you can’t think of anything else that could possibly make you happy or happier than getting up every day and acting, playing this crazy game that you make something up and playing pretending as if that’s true; if that’s for you, you should start to do it. 

And it’s not rocket science.  There are a lot of books about it.  I had a great teach Sandy Meisner and there’s a book that he wrote kind of chronicling a class that his two-year program takes you through.  And you can learn many things, but it’s really doing it.  If you have a feeling to do it, that’s what you might do.  And that’s what you start to do.  If you make acting a part of your daily life, first of all, that’s a satisfying end in itself.  But you might find that you start to get good at it and opportunities may come.  If you’re of that sort of temperament you may investigate how to study formally and pursue the profession if that’s of your temperament and all of that.

But I’d say start to act; be a fan.  See if you’re a person who loves, is a fan of and a lover of it, a devotee of literature, of material and you say, “I’ve got to do that.”  Then start to do it anywhere you can that’s what I would say.”

You can catch Jeff Goldblum Sunday nights on Law & Order:  Criminal Intent on the USA Network.