Norbert Leo Butz: “I’ve never said no to a job in my entire life”

Playing the role popularized by Tom Hanks with 2002’s Catch Me If You Can in the film’s musical adaptation has put Norbert Leo Butz on the radar screens of many. Still, as he explains in a recent interview with the New York Post, he doesn’t view himself as anything more than a “journeyman actor.”

“I’ve never said no to a job in my entire life. I have three young daughters! I have a long way to go…” the humble 44-year-old told the Post. “I’ve never been given the luxury of having an ego.”

In addition to his current role as FBI agent Carl Hanratty in Catch, he actor’s stage credits include Wicked, ENRON and Rent, and he also holds the distinction of replacing Entourage star Jeremy Piven in Speed-the-Plow after that actor’s reported mercury-poisoning. “(Piven) left so abruptly that he left all of his stuff in his dressing room,” said Butz, who took Piven’s place on just five days’ notice. “A flat-screen TV, a video game, a case of wine, an iPod. All of which I took. That was my payback.”

Butz has had a very respectable career and his star only looks to be rising, although he doesn’t seem to be the biggest fan of his industry. “It’s a horrible business. I’m at a point in my career where I’m asking myself hard questions about what it is I do, and how little control the actor has in the commercial Broadway world. Am I going to not work or not believe in something because a reviewer says it isn’t worth the paper it’s written on?”

Check out this performance on Late Night with David Letterman,  of ‘Don’t Break the Rules’ from Catch Me If You Can

Via the New York Post