The Secret Plan of Jack Black

It's possible that in the next few hours Jack Black will become a father. "I'm sorry, but I have to keep my cell phone on," Black says. "My lady"--wife Tanya Haden, a musician--"is nine months preggy. I may need to pounce into action." A minute later, Black forgets the name of the dish he had for breakfast each morning while making his latest film, Nacho Libre, in Oaxaca, Mexico. This bothers him so much that he whips the phone open--"Sorry, I got to do this"--and calls a friend in Paris, who doesn't answer because it's 4 a.m. there. By the time he's tracked down someone who was on set and can refresh his memory--"Chilaquiles! Gracias, Roz!"--his phone is beeping wanly. "Mmmm, out of juice. That was pretty stupid."

If you've seen a typical Black performance--as the manic record-store clerk in High Fidelity, the manic but sweet wannabe rock star in The School of Rock or the manic and sadistic half of Tenacious D, the world's most delusional folk-metal duo--this might seem like a revelatory moment, as well as a good time to put in a call to child services. Black, 37, can be irresponsible and gross and all those other things associated with burly comics since John Belushi first belched his way into moviegoers' hearts. But for Black, chilaquiles moments are actually pretty rare. "We lived together during The School of Rock," says Mike White, who wrote Rock and co-wrote Nacho Libre, "and I can say Jack's surprisingly unlike his screen alter egos. He's really smart and effortlessly funny, but he's not a garrulous slob. There's a bit of that in him--he can access it when he wants it--but that's what acting is about."

Which is another way of saying that Black is a guy who's funny in movies rather than a funny guy who happens to be in movies. (Think of the difference between Bill Murray and Adam Sandler.) In Nacho Libre, out June 16, he plays a half-Mexican monk who starts wrestling to earn money for his order's beloved orphans. Because Black wears tights and has a physique like a throw pillow, many people have tabbed Nacho as this summer's Wedding Crashers--an over-the-top comedy poised to do big business. As directed by Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite), though, the $35 million film is more like Don Quixote set in the absurd subculture of Mexican wrestling than a traditional multiplex comedy. "Jack doesn't wink at the camera," says Hess. "He lives in the weird universe of the movie, so the funny stuff comes from him being the character, not the other way around."

It takes a specific kind of talent to pull off this type of performance, and it took Black almost two decades to figure out how to harness his talent successfully. "I first met him when he was 12," says Tim Robbins, who, as the co-founder of the Los Angeles theater troupe the Actors' Gang, gave Black a role in the play Inside Eddie Binstock. "After that, he just kept coming back and hanging out." Black's parents, divorced rocket scientists, encouraged their son's artistic hanging out, and as Black matured and enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles, he landed in Actors' Gang productions of Peer Gynt and The Good Woman of Setzuan; eventually Robbins recommended Black to his agent. "He was disciplined, professional," Robbins recalls. "As Jack would say, he could also bring the special sauce."