Justine
winter 2004
'Jared Padalecki - Meet the Boy Next Door'
By Palmer Adams
He has pets with double names, 100 pounds of meat stockpiled in his freezer, a hit TV series, and two movies coming out. Otherwise, Jared's a pretty normal guy with three loves; his family, his dogs, and (darn it!) his girlfriend.
I have to admit that dialing Jared Padalecki's cell phone makes my heart pound faster than normal. I've rehearsed the cute but to-the-point message I'll be leaving at least 10 times, so I'm a bit heartbroken when his casually charming voice comes on and say his phone is no longer accepting voicemails. He must not be finished taping Gilmore Girls, I think. I'll wait and call back in a few minutes. Less than 60 seconds later, my phone rings. "Palmer? It's Jared Padalecki. I'm so sorry, I was in the bathroom." Hmmm.... not exactly glamorous, but in a way, adorable. he misses phone calls for the same unglamorous reason as the rest of is!
The more I learn about Jared, the more my little-girl movie star infatuation grows into a full-blown crush... if that's possible over the phone (I mean, you really have to hear his voice!). So why else do I love the guy?
He hates his middle name.
"My full name is Jared Tristan - not my idea- Padalecki. I was actually going to be named Tristan Jared but I had a cousin Kristen who was born a month before I was, so my mommy wanted to name me Jared Tristan, as opposed to Tristan Jared because she though we'd get mixed up or something. I'm kind of happy about it."
Some of his busiest days are free of photo shoots, filming, and fittings.
Jared's plate has been full for a while now. He spent four months of 2003 in Nambia, Africa shooting The Flight of the Phoenix and most of this year filming House of Wax (oddly set in small town Iowa) on Australia's Gold Coast. He's only been back to the US for two weeks and has already begun shooting the fifth season of Gilmore Girls. When I ask him if there's a break in his near future he says, "I don't think so I think I'll be working hard until at least November or December. My representation kind of lets me learn about [about my schedule] piece by piece. They don't like to worry me and say, "Well, you'll be working for the next fifteen weeks and you're not going to have a day off.'"
Luckily I manage to get Jared on a rare day off - he's at his house in Los Angeles- so it's pretty surprising that his response to "What's your day been like so far?" is the longest of the interview. "This morning my parents, who have been visiting me since two Saturdays ago, left at five in the morning so I got up to say goodbye to them,". After that, he took his girlfriend to work "around seven o'clock-ish" because two days earlier her car had been broken into outside of his house. "Not like punk-kids broken into, but like car-ring expert broken into - because the dash was gone, the airbags were gone, the seatbelts were gone, the engine was gone,". After meeting with the LAPD's, fingerprint analysis about the break in, Jared waited around a while for a freezer full of meat and a personal gym to be delivered to his house and talked about his way through five. Yes, five- consecutive interviews. And he says, "I'm still unpacking my stiff from Australia." Keep in mind that Jared and I are speaking at noon.
He's a true Texas boy at heart.
Born and raised in San Antonio with his younger sister, Mean and his brother, Jeff, Jared moved to LA when he was 18, but he going home frequently for a refreshing taste of reality (and some good tacos). 'So is everything really bigger and better down in Texas?" I ask. Jared snickers, "What I love about Texas is that everybody gives it this reputation that it's slow-paced. But it's not so much slow-paced as it is that people take their time to say, 'Hey what's going on?' and truly wonder what's going on. IF you're like, 'You know, I could be better' they will sit there and try to make you feel better. It's just pretty unaffected so far, and the traffic's not so bad. It's not so crazy. The topic of everyone's conversation isn't the business and their next project,". The first thing Jared does when he goes back home is eat at all his favorite restaurants. "I have a list of people to see and restaurants to hit. I don't always make the people, but I always make the restaurants... and then come back, you know, about fifteen times every year. They have great authentic Mexican food and lots of good Tex-Mex. And big burgers and big steaks. You know, it's Texas. It pretty much fits the stereotype."
He's a dog lover.
Jared shares his valley digs in LA with two roommates - Sadie Lane, a 17-month-old German shepherd mix, and Harley Brown, a 4-mont-old mastiff mix. "I actually rescued both of them from the same shelter," he says. When he's working he takes them along or leaves them with his friends, who are always eager to dog sit. "My friend Jordan is always dying to come over and sit with them whenever. When I work out of the country - like I just got back from Australia - they actually go to my house in Texas to live with my dad because he's retired now."
He still believes what he sees in the movies.
When asked if he has any funny stories from Africa, Jared casually responds," Well, I flipped my car on the way to work one day. I didn't get hurt at all, except fro a little cut on my foot, but I've seen so many movies where the car flips and everybody's fine, but them it explodes. So I got out of the car, ran across the road barefooted, basically, and I was just waiting for the car to explode. I was in the middle of the desert, so there was no wind. There was no sound. There were no people. I was like, 'Oh my God, I'm dead.' I really thought I was dead. I ran over to the car - after it didn't explode - and I was looking for my phone, but I couldn't find it. And I was like 'Of course I can't find my phone. I don't need my phone. I'm dead.' Finally, someone else on their way to work came by, and I figured out I wasn't dead, but it was a pretty crazy couple of minutes."
He's head over heels for his girlfriend.
Most actors aren't willing to chat it up about their love lives with a total stranger, but - lucky for us - Jared doesn't have a problem with it. When I ask him if he wants to tell me about his girlfriend, his reply is, "I do! Her name is Sandra McCoy, and I'm crazy about her." And he's just warming up." We actually met doing a film in Virginia called Cry Wolf. That was October [of 2003], and we just kind of flirted." Apparently Sandy, as Jared calls her, made the first move. "She left me a message on my phone, so we started getting together, and we started talking. we really hit it off. She's visited me [in Africa and Australia], and we just can't get enough of each other. Finally I'm going to be in the same country as her for an extended period of time, so I'm going to spend as much time with her as I can."
Later I ask who his role models are," I really look up to my girlfriend, which is kind of funny, because I think she tells me the same thing sometimes. But I really respect the decisions that she makes and the way she treats life."
Trust me, this boy is whipped. I try (and fail miserably) to get her off his mind... "Do you have any celebrity crushes?" I innocently inquire. "Not really," he says. "Well, you know what, I have one celebrity crush, and my girlfriend actually know it. I have a huge crush on Brooke Burke. I had my twenty-first birthday out in Australia, and for my birthday my girlfriend sent me a poster of Brooke Burke. So I thought that was kind of funny. you know, she's just got a great sense of humor. She's a great girl."
"What- your girlfriend or Brooke Burke?"
Dead serious, Jared replies, "My girlfriend! I can't speak for Brooke Burke, just because I haven't met her. I'm sure she's a beautiful person too, but my girlfriend in particular."
Shoot. Oh well, at least I have his number. That's how Sandy snagged him. No wonder his phone isn't accepting messages anymore. Now it all makes sense!
"I've noticed that the more comfortable I've become with myself, the better actor I've become. Because once you're sure of who you are, you're to afraid to step into somebody else's shoes."
Jared's take on...
> Australians: "They kind of remind me of Texans. They like to have a good time, and they're real try to themselves. They'll rib you a little bit. I like the trust between two people when they can say, 'Hey what's with your shoes?' and you're like, 'Hey, what's with your face?'
> Johnny Depp: " I haven't met him, and I'd love the opportunity to work with him sometime. I really look up to his work."
> His greatest strength: "I don't take myself too seriously. I don't take offense when someone makes fun of me or says 'I like this person better and I don't like you as much as this person."
> His biggest weakness: "I love to have a good time. I don't get to see a lot of my friends, so when I do, sometimes I have a tendency to stay out too late and find myself going to sleep as the sun's coming up." > The future of Gilmore Girls: "It's going to be interesting for me to see how it evolves too, because I know about as much as the general public. Maybe less, even. I haven't read the Internet."