You can get Tom Cavanagh to eat pretty much anything. Recently, on a $100 dare from one of his costars on the new NBC hit dramedy 'Ed', the lanky Cavanagh devoured 18 hot dogs in five minutes. At a restaurant in Los Angeles last summer, he impressed the show's creators, 'Late Show With David Letterman' alums Rob Burnett and Jon Beckerman, by downing four pounds of medium-rare beef.
"The Stinking Rose's specialty is something called 'the slab', Burnett explains on the phone from the 'Ed' set, in suburban New Jersey. "It's a two-pound piece of prime rib, and if you eat one you don't have to eat for the next three days. Tom was three-quarters through his slab when we decided to bet him $50 he couldn't finish it. Not only did he finish it, they brought out another one and he ate that, too. The kitchen staff was coming out to watch. He was chewing it up like a Canadian boll weevil."
"When the gauntlet is dropped," says Cavanagh, "one must accept the challenge."
Between meals, Tom Cavanagh plays Ed Stevens, and Everyman who turns the worst day of his life-he gets fired from his job at a law firm and comes home to find his wife in bed with the mailman-into a fresh start by moving back to his small midwestern hometown, someplace called Stuckeyville, Ohio. There he courts his high-school crush, buys the town's bowling alley and is soon dispensing legal advice from behind the counter.
"I think Tom and Ed have a lot in common in their eternal optimism and their throwback morality to another time," says Julie Bowen, who plays Carol Vessey, the object of Ed's affection. "A Jimmy Stewart era, where small-town neighbours take care of each other and everybody knows each other."
"Tom doesn't dress as well as Ed," says Cavanagh's costar Michael Ian Black, who plays the always-scheming bowling alley manager, Phil, "but my hypothesis is that Tom and Ed are basically indistinguishable. The real Tom plays a lot more basketball, but he makes the same kinds of bets that Ed makes with people-like he bet me $500 I couldn't drink nine giant Starbucks frappuccinos in 45 minutes and $2 I couldn't drink a 20-ounce Gatorade in one swallow."
Actors usually complain when people confuse them with their characters. But Cavanagh is happy to admit that he has more than a little in common with Ed.
"The qualities in Ed that I find admirable are persistence and optimism," says Cavanagh. "The idea of taking things that are a negative and instead of wallowing in self-pity, turning them into something good-that's the type of viewpoint I find worth pursuing."
The 32-year-old Cavanagh was born in Ottawa, Ontario, the second of five children. When he was 5, his parents answered a newspaper ad looking for teachers and moved the family to Ghana, in West Africa, for three years. They returned to Lennoxville, Quebec, a town not much bigger than Stuckeyville, and enrolled their children in French immersion school for the rest of their education.
"In retrospect it sounds exotic," says Cavanagh during a break in the New Jersey bowling alley where the show is filmed. "But really, if you're lucky enough to come from a loving family, it doesn't matter how much you move around."
How Ed! Cavanagh's happy childhood established-his proud parents and his brother the lawyer are actually visiting the set today-one wonders what, if anything, makes this earnest, well-adjusted man feel anxious or afraid. Romantic rejection? Professional failure? Painful death?
"Puff adder snakes," he says. "There's very little to be afraid of after growing up in Africa with puff adders 12 feet from the house. I wouldn't want to run into one of those suckers-they're the second deadliest snakes in the world."
At Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Cavanagh studied biology, English and education-and spent all of his spare time either shooting hoops or acting in plays. But when varsity basketball conflicted with the lead role in 'Grease', he was finally forced to choose between his passions.
"I chose to do the play, but then the team was like, 'If he goes, we all go,'" Cavanagh remembers. "The whole team ended up coming to the show after their game to cheer and show their support. It was pretty moving." How Stuckeyville!
Before 'Ed', Cavanagh paid his dues in theatre ('Brighton Beach Memoirs' in Toronto, 'A Chorus Line' on Broadway); on a forgettable TV series ('Jake and the Kid'); and in one well-known Canadian beer commercial for Labatt's Blue with the tag line "If I wanted water, I'd ask for water." In 1999, while waiting for 'Ed' to be picked up by a network, Cavanagh bode his time playing Doug "Dog Boy" Boyce, a character who thinks he's a dog, on NBC's 'Providence'.
"We auditioned hundreds of people for the role of Ed", says Burnett. "Tom seemed like the kind of guy who was both a great actor for the dramatic stuff and also very funny-like Tom Hanks. It's a rare double threat. Boys like him because he feels like one of the guys, and my wife wants to leave me for him."
Cavanagh credits his good nature to his parents, who at this exact moment are standing just off-set with Cavanagh and his brother, taking a coffee break. Suddenly they all break into song.
"You can't believe a family like that exists," Bowen says later. "They were harmonizing about the moon! They just have this incredible energy and enthusiasm, and Tom gets it from them. His most endearing attribute is his ability to make up songs on the spot about crew members. Last night, after 14 hours, people's eyes were rolling back into their heads, and at 2:15 in the morning Tom started singing 'Dana's drinking coffee by the monitor.'"
So who does the funniest, cutest guy in the world spend his time off with? He doesn't have a girlfriend, he says, and of course everyone wants to set him up with their sister, but being on the set 16 hours a day doesn't leave him much time for love. Not that he's complaining.
"This may sound sophomoric or crass or hokey," says Cavanagh from behind his constant, irrepressible grin. "But my philosophy is that the only time negative emotions come out is when you're deprived of doing what you love. And I'm very lucky to be doing what I love." Ed! Tom! Ed! ---By Deirdre Dolan (Us Weekly)