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Q: Is it true that Dane Cook wasn’t always the confident in-your-face comedian who’s had so much success and acclaim?
A: Growing up, Dane was nothing like the charismatic fitness trainer he’s playing in the new Steve Carell comedy, Dan in Real Life. “I had a lot of fear when I was a child, a lot of insecurity and a lot of little phobias,” he confesses. “It’s interesting, because when my mother was getting ready to have me, she had all these phobias like being afraid of leaving the house. I think just by being inside of her before I was born I absorbed some of them. I had this major fear of abandonment. I’d leave to go do stand-up gigs and I used to feel like, ‘Oh, my god. I just feel so alone. I miss my family.’ I finally had to literally look at myself in a mirror and go, ‘’You’ve got worth, man. You have something to say. You’re not in elementary school anymore. It’s not about who’s the coolest on the playground. It’s about being real and honest and raw with your emotions.’” Now, as he keeps on scoring on the big screen as well with his stand-up career—not to mention those best-selling comedy CD’s—Cook insists he didn’t have any other goal in life. “I never had a plan B,” he says. “I remember thinking early on people who have a plan B start slacking off. The next thing you know you’re planning for plan B. I never did. I said, ‘I’m going to live the rest of my life attempting to do stand-up comedy with the hopes of taking it to the limit.’”
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