Hit Movie, Star Sweetie, Broadway Debut: Tenor Star Justin Bartha on His Magical Year

Age: 31

Hometown: Detroit, Michigan

Currently: Making his Broadway debut as Max, a mild-mannered assistant who’s tapped to step in for an over-the-top opera star (played by Anthony LaPaglia) in the Broadway revival of Lend Me a Tenor.

The Acting Bug: A broken wrist at age 15 put Bartha on the path to stardom in movies such as The Hangover and National Treasure. “I wanted to be an athlete and tried out for all the sports teams [at West Bloomfield High School],” he recalls, “then I broke my wrist and needed something to do. There were pretty girls in the theater department, so I tried out and never looked back. I was obsessed.” Debuting as the fairy Cobweb in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he began to seriously consider the art of performing while playing the jailor Meeker in Inherit the Wind. “I really wanted to know how to act—how to do it correctly,” Bartha remembers. To find out, he set his sights on N.Y.U.’s Tisch School of the Arts, and was accepted. “I was a very ambitious teenager,” he says, adding with a laugh, “It’s gone downhill since then.”

Infamous Debut: Halfway through college, Bartha switched to N.Y.U.’s film program and began writing and directing commercials and short films. After graduation, he made a pilot for MTV, which led to an audition for the featured role of a mentally handicapped kidnap victim alongside Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez in Gigli. The now-notorious flop gravely wounded Bennifer’s careers, but Bartha escaped with good reviews. “I had people telling me I was going to get nominated for an Oscar before I shot a frame of the movie!” he says with a laugh. “It took a very long time to make, and we reshot a lot of it, but I didn’t know anything [different]. Yes, it wasn’t a great result, but for me, it was an amazing learning experience.”

Under the Radar: The chameleon quality Bartha puts to good use in Lend Me a Tenor is evident in films such as the two National Treasure capers and comedies such as Failure to Launch. His ability to look nerdy one minute and dreamy the next is “all about creating a character,” he says, explaining, “my favorite actors don’t have any self-consciousness about their performances. With this play, [director] Stanley [Tucci] and I talked a lot about Italian leading men from the 50s and 60s. I’ve always had a bit of an obsession with Giancarlo Giannini, and I kept him in the back of my mind: One second, he was the most frail, nerdy guy, and the next second, he was seducing a beautiful woman—and it was always believable.”

Tabloid Target: Around the time Bartha opened in the smash-hit comedy The Hangover (as groom-to-be Doug Billings, who gets a heck of a sunburn while stuck on the roof of a Las Vegas hotel), the celebrity press became verrrrry interested in his real-life relationship with actress/fashion icon Ashley Olsen. Bartha has learned a few tricks from his press-shy sweetheart of two years, saying politely, “I keep my personal life private and I take my work very seriously—and that’s pretty much all I have time for.” As for paparazzi who snap him and Olsen eating out in Paris and jogging in L.A.., he says, “The concept of celebrity that’s put out by tabloid culture is something I not only don’t think about—I want no part of it. And if you’re not living a lifestyle covered by the paparazzi, it’s fairly easy to stay away from it, especially in New York.”

Taking the Lead: The high-energy role of Max in Lend Me a Tenor is tremendously demanding, particularly for someone who hasn’t been on stage since college, but Bartha seems perfectly at ease. “I saw this as an opportunity to put all of those years of training and hard work to use,” he says. “With this play, and other things I have coming up, I’m finally able to show what I can do.” Bartha shares a May-December romance with Catherine Zeta-Jones in the romantic comedy The Rebound, which has been released all over the world and “hopefully” will make its U.S. debut this year. (He caught his film co-star's performance in A Little Night Music and declares it "wonderful.") The gritty drama Holy Rollers recently debuted at Sundance. But for now, Broadway’s the place for Justin Bartha. “Since I broke my wrist at 15, this has been my dream," he says, "and I feel like the luckiest guy in the world.”