
Caucasian, supporting or leading in dramas, Bromance, stoner flicks, Broadway, and weird indie shit: Slightly ethnic in the East Coast way—a space that 70 years ago would have been filled by the likes of Clark Gable or Cary Grant—one further progressed by the earnest and category-defying dedication of full-blooded Italians like 70s-era DeNiro and Pacino, and tough-and/or-sensitive-Jewish-guy performances by Dustin Hoffman.Early on in his career, however, Jonah was hired as someone to fill Seth Rogen's "Likable Jew with a Fresh Mouth" bucket—a more relatable, more affable, less drug-addled form of John Belushi (or James Belushi, [according to Rogen](http:// http://youtu.be/RS1Guq55LQw?t=3m19s)) and his pop-inflected descendant, Chris Farley.Then it changed, culminating in the commercially-and-critically-lauded locus with The Wolf of Wall Street. It is now apparent that Jonah has traversed a much different road than expected, one that is quickly veering toward Total Greatness.I have a friend in Palo Alto who is a doctor by trade, one who spent his 30s and 40s as the Grateful Dead’s private physician. He’s Jewish and has Jonah’s (and, in fact, Seth Rogen’s) squat frame. Their same curly hair and sanguine demeanor. Stoned and complacent and selfishly lazy until he’s not, all the time. He is a man who now, as a drug-free crusader for various charities, is, in my mind, a strange barometer of the attractiveness of Jonah Hill as a public persona.
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