Hollywood Byte #60: Napoleon Dynamite

Although Jon Heder is best known to legions of fans for his portrayal of the quirky hero Napoleon Dynamite, Blades of Glory should make his name and comedic talent familiar to a wider audience demographic. In the new film from Dreamworks Pictures, Heder plays Jimmy MacElroy, a U.S. men's figure skater who's banned for life and stripped of his gold medal. But thanks to a loophole in the ban, MacElroy teams up with fellow banned athlete Chazz Michael Michaels (Will Farrell) to skate as a pairs team. Heder said working with Farrell was a lot of fun.

"I didn't know what to expect, but I had always heard he was a nice guy," said Heder. "Not that every star out there isn't nice, but sometimes there are egos out there. And Will is very giving and nice. It was a dream-come-true."

When it comes to being funny on ice, just about anyone can do that, unintentionally. But when you're playing a professional figure skater, the laughs are not supposed to be about how badly you skate.

"The most challenging thing was just being on skates," said Heder. "That was the biggest thing. We're making a comedy and we know that a lot of the comedy is going to come from the dialogue and the situation. We'll have outlandish outfits and our hair is going to look amazing. And on the skates, we're supposed to be really good skaters. So the comedy wasn't going to come from us screwing up on the ice."

Heder said he remembers thinking, "I like to dance and I like to get physical in my movies and I knew there would be opportunities to express myself physically in this. However, getting on skates, you don't have firm ground. You're on slippery ground, so I was out of my element in some ways. It didn't totally hold me back because I trained and I got better and I was able to work with what I had."

When he's not making people laugh in movies like School for Scoundrels, Just Like Heaven, Monster House, The Benchwarmers and the upcoming Surf's Up; Heder spends a lot of time playing video games. Although he doesn't consider himself a "video game junkie," he's definitely been a gamer for a long time.