The Education of A Comic Prodigy

But when Undeclared was canceled after one season, Rogen didn't get many auditions. "It didn't bother me very much. I didn't think I'd ever be an actor," says Rogen. "I thought I was going to be a writer." All the time, like some sort of '70s-movie kung-fu master, Apatow was coming up with ridiculous writing tests for Rogen and Goldberg to pass: turn an idea of his into a movie in 10 days (even though nothing was going to happen at the end of 10 days); come up with 100 one-page-long ideas for movies (they did 50). "Rogen's focused and he's driven but not in the way that a lot of people are," says Rudd. "When you meet him, you wouldn't think he's focused or driven at all. You'd just think he's high. Which he might be."

It's that laid-back, inappropriate confidence that makes Rogen so endearing. You expect someone so obviously out of place everywhere--a 13-year-old on a stand-up-comedy stage, an 18-year-old high school dropout on a sitcom-writing staff, the schlub who gets to romance Katherine Heigl--to be uncomfortable. Instead, he acts as if, while he may have wandered into the scene accidentally, he belongs there. Or maybe he is stoned.