As competitive and cutthroat as Hollywood can be, it can also be a place where deep friendships can be forged. Not the kind of buddies like the “We’re the most successful, talented, good-looking and famous--let’s be best pals” breed, of the present Ocean's Eleven variety, or even the old school Rat Pack, but the bonds formed through long days of auditioning, taking day jobs and hoping for that one big break--and even more rare, the alliances that last as some of the friends succeed wildly while the other still struggle.
That’s the sort of tie that’s endured between actor Vince Vaughn, actor-writer-director Jon Favreau, child star-turned-producer Peter Billingsley and standup comic Ahmed Ahmed, who all met during their salad days trying to make it in showbiz in the early 90s and stayed tight during the unpredictable ebbs and flows of their careers.
Today the old gang is back together again in Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show, which documents the 30-city comedy tour across America Vaughn organized and hosted in 2006, and they explored their own long roadtrip to success together with Hollywood.com.
Peter Billingsley: I met Vince on the Afterschool Special, and actually I met Ahmed Ahmed then as well, who was an extra in that, and we all became friends. And at the time, Vince was one of the smartest, certainly funniest guys that I had met, and it was a question of ‘when’ with him, not ‘if.’ And Vince would go out for a lot of stuff like a lot of actors do, and he would get really down to the wire, down to the wire and just wouldn’t get it.
Ahmed Ahmed: We just always had this great friendship, and just have always supported each other. I think we’re just sort of cut from the same cloth. We all have no similar upbringings, but our parents instilled in us respect and hard work. Vince is really close to his family, as am I, and so is Peter. So I think the family values has a lot to do with it, with us being supportive of each other.
Photo(s) by Hollywood.com Staff- © 2008- Picturehouse- All Rights Reserved