As Ike Barinholtz approaches the register at Farm Boy Produce, the cashier regards the 48-year-old comic-actor-writer-director with a gimlet-eyed skepticism, as if he’s a shoplifter or worse. “Are you famous?” For a moment, Barinholtz can only smile, revealing the trademark gap in his teeth. The live wire is at a rare loss for words. Finally, he musters, “Do you think I am?”
The question hangs over grocery shopping with Barinholtz. The Chicago native is on a mission to make me, a Brooklyn boy, a chopped cheese — the classic bodega sandwich — albeit with ingredients from Los Angeles’s Fairfax Farmers Market. Barinholtz, however, is a gourmet interrupted.
A woman named Nava (she shares her name after asking Barinholtz who he is) raises her phone and snaps a photo of him paying for kielbasa and pierogi. “I’m going to send it to my husband,” she says. “If you’re famous, he would know.”
A ruling would come as a relief to Barinholtz. In addition to Nava and the cashier, he’s asked whether he’s famous by customers at Kaylin and Kaylin Pickles and Huntington Meats, one of the market’s security guards, and a passing shopper who takes a photo with Barinholtz just in case he turns out to be somebody. “Maybe he thinks I’m John Cena coming back from the woods,” says Barinholtz, who sports a bushy beard, work boots, cargo pants, and a Carhartt jacket. “Or that Mark Wahlberg got doughy.”
Two people, however, instantly and definitively identify Barinholtz: a pair of agency bigwigs leaving a breakfast meeting. One makes a beeline and bro-hugs him.
This form of fame-ishness, it seems, is Barinholtz’s brand: Often recognized by face, name, or project but rarely for all three, yet known and in high demand among Hollywood insiders. His skills have made him a comic actor’s comic actor, a writer’s writer, and a chosen baton-carrier of beloved comedy legends like Mel Brooks and Norman Lear. He has written for and appeared in MadTV, The Mindy Project, and History of the World Part II; acted in big, broad films like Neighbors, Blockers, and Suicide Squad; and written, directed, and starred in The Oath.Editor’s picks
After slow-cooking for more than two decades, Barinholtz’s career is starting to simmer. Sure to boost his clout among industry insiders, he co-created and executive produced Netflix’s hit comedy Running Point, starring Kate Hudson as a Jeanie Buss type who takes over a family-owned L.A. basketball franchise. And he is about to become more recognizable than ever thanks to The Studio, an Apple TV+ send-up of Hollywood movie-making (premiering March 26). Barinholtz stars alongside the show’s co-creator Seth Rogen as Sal Saperstein, a hot-mess studio exec prone to excess. Barinholtz’s own vice is filling a half-dozen grocery bags and counting. “I have an eating problem. I do,” he says. “I take Ozempic but cut it with french fries.”
Shopping without a list, Barinholtz is exacting, however. He bypasses baguettes in favor of Italian loaves, pushes aside Little Gem lettuce (“Too fancy. Iceberg! This ain’t gonna be no woke chopped cheese”) and squeezes one avocado after another. “Bad news,” he announces. “Much like my ass, these are a little too firm, you know?”
A few minutes’ drive away, Barinholtz unpacks the makings of our lunch spread on his kitchen counter and starts slicing with speed and skill. “Of course, I burned my finger so I have this giant Band-Aid,” he says, “which I’m sure looks cool — like I’m on The Bear.”
He might as well be. Barinholtz cooks dinner five times a week for his wife and kids. He says he’ll be making Chicago-style Italian beef hoagies for an upcoming Super Bowl party. He wasn’t asked to make or bring anything — he told the host what would be served. “Then I can be in control,” he explains.Related Content
A frequent dinner guest, Rogen marvels at Barinholtz’s culinary precision and commitment to craft. It’s the same with comedic fare, says Rogen, who likens Barinholtz to a jazz musician whose improvisational skill is built atop refined technique and attention to detail. It made Barinholtz invaluable in The Studio. “The way we shot the show was as hard as anything I’ve ever done, and he really ate it up. Sorry,” Rogen says with a laugh.
COMEDY AND COOKING have always gone hand in hand for Barinholtz. Growing up, when he’d hang out at the home of his childhood friend David Stassen — now his writing and producing partner — Stassen would play Blades of Steel on Nintendo, while Barinholtz would bury himself in Stassen’s parents’ copies of Bon Appétit.
Barinholtz gorged on movies too, though: hard comedies like Blazing Saddles, National Lampoon’s Vacation, and Trading Places, and Mafia sagas — particularly Goodfellas, which he saw on opening night. Perhaps not coincidentally, that film doubles as a cooking instructional video: Amidst a cocaine-fueled mania, Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill shares how to make Sunday gravy; the scenes in prison show Paulie (Paul Sorvino) slicing garlic with a razor blade and offering a line Barinholtz says defines his weight loss plan: “We gotta go on a diet — tomorrow, we eat sandwiches.”
The movie’s comedic edge struck him. “I just remember laughing and being blown away,” Barinholtz says. “I always thought if I ever meet Marty Scorsese, I’ve got to tell him, ‘Goodfellas made me want to do this!’ Cut to thirty-what years later…”
Defying the “never meet your heroes” adage, Barinholtz has worked with Brooks on History of World Part II (they discussed the importance of fart jokes and fighting Nazis), Lear on several live television performances of All in the Family (after the first, they shared a late-night joint), and now Scorsese, who makes a memorable appearance in the first episode of The Studio. One scene called for Barinholtz’s character to lay the most ass–kissy line possible on the legendary director, who knew precisely what it should be. “Marty goes, ‘Well, people always come up to me and say, You’re the reason I got into movies,’” Barinholtz recalls with a wince. “I was like, ‘Oh, shit — I’m one of those guys.’” Luckily, self-abasement comes easily to Barinholtz. After Sal delivers the bootlicking line, Scorsese responds: “Who the fuck are you?!”
Isaac Barinholtz was born in Chicago and raised in the Lakeview section of the city. He attended Hebrew day school, the Latin School of Chicago, and Boston University, albeit briefly. After the initial shock at Barinholtz dropping out wore off, his parents supported his pursuit of a career in acting. When his father took him to an ImprovOlympic show (now known as iO Theater), it lit a fire in Barinholtz and gave him a focus. He worked for the Chicago Transit and in telemarketing while studying with ImprovOlympic and the Second City, befriending the likes of Amy Poehler and Jack McBrayer. Later, he joined and helped anchor the legendary improv troupe Boom Chicago (which, despite its name, is based in Amsterdam), where he became close with Jordan Peele, Jason Sudeikis, Seth Myers, and Amber Ruffin.
As a mix of indie and classic rock plays over his sound system, Barinholtz simultaneously browns ground beef, grills bread, and poaches eggs in a pasta pot — cooking from memory and freestyling.
Increasingly busy, Barinholtz is beginning to limit his multitasking, at least professionally. While he relishes the focus of directing movies, taking the director’s chair on a series isn’t for him, especially when juggling the workloads of writer, producer, and actor. “It’s like, I’m already working on this nonstop,” he says, “and now I’ve got to do a shot list too?”
Because of the competing demands on his time, simply acting in The Studio was a welcome change. “Sometimes,” he says, “to do a show where all they want you to do is be pretty and say some funny lines is a luxury.” He found himself in good company. Besides Rogen, the show features Kathryn Hahn, Catherine O’Hara, and Bryan Cranston, and it’s awash in cameos from A-listers, including Anthony Mackie, Ron Howard, Zoë Kravitz, Ice Cube, and Charlize Theron. Barinholtz was a calming presence on a challenging shoot. “Everyone likes Ike, it’s true,” says Rogen. “Marty thought Ike was so funny. He loved working with him. All these people did.”
Although the project took ages to get into production, Barinholtz was part of the vision from the start. “Seth approached me years ago and soft-pitched the show,” Barinholtz recalls. “He was like, ‘I’m writing this part for you.’ And I was like, yes!”
To Barinholtz, the premise and treatment evoked The Larry Sanders Show (it also has shades of Robert Altman’s The Player and Tropic Thunder), a madcap satire that delves into the tension between art (cinema for “pansexual Bed-Suy mixologists,” as Barinholtz’s Sal puts it) and commerce (big-budget movies about beverage brands! Diarrhea-spewing zombies!). Despite intending only to act, Barinholtz contributed notes and pitched fixes that saved scenes, Rogen says, and as Sal, he built a rapport with Rogen’s studio head character Matt that anchors the show. “I’m always looking for the dynamic of two idiots, one idiot thinking he’s a little smarter than the other idiot,” Rogen says. “That’s what our dynamic is on the show. And maybe off it.”
It helped that Rogen and his creative partner (and childhood friend) Evan Goldberg have a similar approach and aesthetic as Barinholtz and Stassen, and Kaling for that matter. “I hope it doesn’t sound douchey, but we try to do comedy with a capital C,” Barinholtz says. “We like stupid people saying stupid things in nine seconds. We just want hard jokes.”
BARINHOLTZ SETS A BUTCHER board on his dining table with a voilà flourish. It’s loaded with open-faced avocado-and-poached egg sandwiches topped with radish and resplendent chopped cheese with tomato and iceberg lettuce peeking out of long sub rolls. The Barinholtz bodega is open. “Here’s a napkin,” Barinholtz says. “Grab one. Of each. Go.”
Barinholtz’s kitchen opens into a family room dotted with framed photos commemorating other milestones. One prominently displayed portrait is the cast of All in the Family and The Jeffersons from their first live special in 2019, with Barinholtz alongside Lear, Woody Harrelson, Marisa Tomei, Jamie Foxx, Will Ferrell, and Kerry Washington.Trending Stories
Barinholtz’s family photos, too, contain multiple celebrities. His younger brother Jon followed him into acting, appearing in Super Store and American Auto, and alongside his sibling in The Oath. More recently, their father, erstwhile attorney Alan Barinholtz, has joined his sons in the family business. After blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearances in several of Barinholtz’s projects, Alan was handed a breakout role in the reality-bending comedy Jury Duty as judge Alan Rosen. That prompted Barinholtz to write a project for Jon, Alan, and him. “The emergence of my dad as Hollywood’s hottest starlet has been great,” Barinholtz says. “It allows us actually to do stuff together.” SAG card in hand, Alan and his wife have become Los Angeles residents like their sons. “He’s living his best life,” Barinholtz says of his father.
And yet, Barinholtz furrows his brow, remembering when a fan approached him, Jon, and Alan on the street, then bypassed both brothers to press the flesh with the paterfamilias. “I love that for him,” Barinholtz recalls with a laughing shrug. “Fucking nepo parent.”
