words: Jay Riggio
photo: Jack Siegel
You know that random dude who you’ve passed by on the street? The one who you swear you’ve seen before on some reality television show or Sunday afternoon teen movie or something; but can’t for the life of you figure out exactly where you’ve seen the bastard? After blocks of racking your brain for notable Diff’rent Strokes cameo appearances, you start to convince yourself that he very well could have been your Olive Garden waiter from last week’s poorly crafted gnocchi dinner. In actuality, the guy you shared street space with is 29-year-old Queens native, David Krumholtz–and yes, he’s both on TV and in the movies. Krumholtz, who stumbled upon acting at the tender age of 13 after being discovered by theatre talent scouts, quickly graduated to the big screen, nabbing roles in The Santa Clause and Addams Family Values. Hollywood embraced Krumholtz’ distinct look, boyish charm and impeccable acting ability. With age and experience, Krumholtz soon transformed from teen actor, to serious on-screen talent–proving he can hang with notable roles in The Ice Storm and Ray. With over 40 onscreen appearances, the current hit TV series, Numb3rs and roles in the highly anticipated, upcoming flicks, Harold & Kumar 2 and Walk Hard, the former Forest Hills Fondue restaurant owner and true New Yorker, is rapidly making the transition from character actor to leading man. Trust me, next time you see David crossing the block, killin’ a falafel, you’ll know just who the hell he is.
You were born and raised in Forest Hills right?
Yeah, yeah, I grew up in Queens. I went to elementary school and junior high school in Queens. I owned a restaurant in Forest Hills too. I was part owner of an all Fondue restaurant, which was a really bad deal. Fondue in Queens? You know, Queens people don’t want to pay forty bucks a head to cook their own food in a pot of boiling water. Although, we were a really good restaurant, it’s just Queens people would show up and they didn’t know what the fuck Fondue was. For Queens people, Fondue was a fon-don’t. But I only did it for four years with me and my two cousins in Forest Hills and I hung out there a lot all throughout high school. You know, that was sort of my hang out. I had a lot of fun there, but it eventually had to close because we couldn’t go bankrupt twice.
How was it being a child star?
It’s not like being an adult, where you’re successful and you worry like, A piano is gonna fall on me out of the sky. You just go for it. You ride that wave when you’re that age. So I had no worries, I just thought, Wow, this is amazing. Plus, my family didn’t have a lot of money, so it was really good. It paid for my college, it paid for private school. It paid for a lot of really nice things for my family, a better lifestyle. So, it was all positive and really cool.
You play this math genius on Numb3rs. How close is the character to yourself?
I’m terrible at math. Could not have been worse. Literally, the worst student in the class at math. And it’s kind of come back to haunt me in the strangest way. But it’s cool to get a second chance at something you sucked at, and I really, really sucked at math. And now I’m a math god or something, the Pied Piper of math. I go to math conventions and math teachers are all over me trying to get my number and stuff. And they were the same people that were failing me in junior high school, so it’s pretty cool, man.
You were living in New York and LA. Now you’re permanently in LA?
Right before I got the part on the show Numb3rs, I was running out of dough, and I couldn’t afford a two bedroom here in Marina del Ray and rent an apartment in Queens at the same time. I mean, I could afford it, but it was really kind of rough, you know? So I chose LA because I knew that’s were the work was. And soon after I booked the TV show, I regret having ever moved out of my apartment in Queens. I never really had to move out, but I did. I couldn’t have known that then. I also had some problems with my neighbor, who was an older Haitian woman who hated me. She would put Voodoo curses on me and shit.
Really? She put curses on you?
Yeah. She just hated me and she just kept screaming at me and terrorizing me, and whenever she would see me in the hallway, she would scream for help as if I was going to do something to her. One morning I walk outside my apartment door, and in the hallway in front of my apartment door, perfectly lined up were six cardboard circles–three red and three yellow. So someone must have put them down like that, it wasn’t like someone dropped them all in a line. And I asked my Haitian friend who worked at the restaurant what that meant, and he said she had cursed my blood and respiratory system. And I was like, Oh shit! and asked him, “Well how do I avoid getting sick?” And he said just don’t believe in the curse, don’t walk around worrying about it, and it won’t affect you. So that’s what I did. But she scared me, man. And then I would see her out of the corner of my eye, like laughing at me and stuff. I think she was just fucking with me though.
