 "Photo: imdb")
Fans of Napoleon Dynamite, the lovable dork from the film of the same name, know that the curly-haired wonder is totally into babes, and to get babes you need mad skills. As the character says, "You know, like nunchuck skills, bowhunting skills, computer hacking skills... Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills."
Good thing Jon Heder doesn't have the same problem. For one thing, the 29-year-old actor is happily married and soon to be a father; it's safe to say his babe-bagging days are behind him. For another, he just acquired some fly new ice-skating skills, courtesy of his costarring turn with Will Ferrell in the newly released film Blades of Glory. Heder and Ferrell have great fun sending up the ultra-effeminate world of triple axels, but the movie almost never made it off the ground after Heder broke his ankle in training.
"I wish I could say it was a cool accident, like I was doing a cool trick, but I wasn't," Heder says. "I was spinning, or at least I was going into a spin, but my body kept spinning and my foot stayed planted in the ice and so I just kind of crumpled and toppled over on top of it and it broke. So that kind of messed up the schedule for the film for a little bit. There [were] a few moments where we thought the movie was going to get canned. But miraculously it worked out. And I healed and I trained and I got back on the ice."
Lucky for us, or the world might never have been introduced to Love Dust, an ice-skating maneuver that Heder and Ferrell originated for the film. "It's pulling the sparkles out of your heart," Heder explains, "blowing them into the air, and then letting them fade down into existence with your fingers." Hmmm. Wonder if we'll see that one in the next Olympics.
Lest you think the movie, which opened at No. 1 at the box office, has gone overboard in its portrayal of competitive skating, Heder claims there's at least one insider who thinks otherwise. Olympic gold medalist Scott Hamilton, who plays a sports anchor in the film, felt the screenplay was right on target. "He was kind of the one telling us… there's crazier stuff in the world of ice skating," Heder says. "You guys need to go farther. You guys need to push it to the limits, because this isn't that far from the truth."
Next up for Heder: The animated movie Surf's Up, featuring Heder as a chicken among a group of penguins who love to hang ten. During downtime the unaffected actor, who actually does sprinkle his speech with the word "gosh," enjoys spending time with his family and…playing with his light saber?
"We just got the Star Wars light sabers, my brothers and I," Heder explains. "So we get on [the Internet] and watch some of the [videos]…oh gosh, the funniest one we saw was this guy who had just obviously bought his light saber, and it was a video of him just like, just basking in the glory of his light saber.
"It showed him opening up the box, taking it out ever so carefully, turning it on, then turning it off, then turning it on, then turning it off. You know, it kept going. Then he would - then he'd hold it up, he'd put it next to another light saber. He never swung it around or showed tricks - he was just touching it and like holding it up close to the camera and then putting it back in the box. It was the funniest thing I'd seen in a long time."
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