His time to shine

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This article was published 02/08/2025 (419 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Jeff Hiller is having a moment.

After a career spent playing various service industry figures in blink-and-you’ll-miss-’em TV and movie roles, the New York-based character actor has received no end of plaudits over the past couple of years for his sensitive, unstereotypical work as Joel, the best friend to Bridget Everett’s Sam, in Somebody Somewhere.

And last month, Hollywood made that affection official, bestowing upon the lifelong portrayer of bit parts a much-deserved Emmy nomination for best supporting actor in a comedy, acknowledging his indelible contribution to the brilliant HBO show.

So the timing is perfect for Hiller’s memoir, whose subtitle — My Twenty-Year Trail to Overnight Success — feels more relevant now than ever.

In fact, within its opening pages, the former Olive Garden waiter says: “Don’t get me wrong, I really want to win an award, but the truth is, I’m just happy to be an actor who gets to act and who doesn’t have to grate mounds of Parmesan onto someone’s pasta in hopes of a large tip.”

Awards aside, Hiller is a charming enough presence on the page — self-effacing, gossipy, irreverent and open in turn — that it probably doesn’t matter if you’re familiar with his work.

A lifelong reader of celebrity memoirs (mostly, as per the title, by actresses of a certain age), Hiller knows all the clichés fans of the genre have come to expect — Buried Importance (mentioning something innocuous that turns out to be momentous), Body Electric (focus on famous body parts) and You Have to Remember (giving the context of the time in which the story took place) — and does not necessarily avoid them.

He takes readers from his tortured teen years, growing up bullied and gay in Texas, to his discovery of improv and the joy found in performing with the famed Chicago company Upright Citizens Brigade. (It might amuse Hiler to learn that, Emmy nod be damned, as of the writing of this review he’s not listed among the luminary alumni of the group on Wikipedia.)

Along the way he spends time in Namibia on a study-abroad semester — he wanted to go to Ireland for reasons involving the film Far and Away and Tom Cruise’s butt crack, but ended up having a life-changing experience — joins a Christian commune and works as an outreach worker recruiting men to be part of an HIV study, hitting up bars and bathhouses to find participants.

Of the latter he recalls, “There was a hot tub that screamed Legionnaire’s disease… There was a dark maze where anything could happen and while I could see the appeal in theory, I kept thinking, ‘What if the anything is murder?’”

A particularly funny chapter finds Hiller answering the most Googled questions about himself, many of which focus on his appearance, which he describes as “as if a theme-park caricature artist crafted one of his drawings in human flesh.” He tells a cutting anecdote about looking over the shoulder of a man who is clearly trying to place him, only to read the words “Actor with weird-looking face” in his device’s search bar.

It’s not all witty self-deprecation and (light) dirt-dishing. Hiller includes a touching chapter about coming out to his parents, for whom he has radiant affection, and delves into the way he’s had to find room for his Christian faith (something he shares with his Somebody Somewhere character).

Of that critically acclaimed show — which gave him the role of a lifetime, one that seemed to have been written for him, but wasn’t — he quotes the Broadway musical Title of Show: “I’d rather be nine people’s favourite thing than a hundred people’s ninth-favourite thing.”

With this delightful book, Hiller deserves to be many more people’s favourite thing.

Jill Wilson is the Arts & Life editor of the Free Press.