12 Interview Moments From Actors In Holiday Movies That Put Us In The Festive Spirit All Year

Jack Black was on the red carpet for the Jumanji: The Next Level premiere when he was approached by someone from Variety. After Black answered a series of questions about the film, the interviewer asked what his favorite Christmas movie was. 

Interviewer: What would say is your No. 1 holiday film that you have to watch every year?

Black: My favorite holiday film? You know what? It's gotta be Elf. Because once again [director] Jon Favreau… and Will Ferrell knocking it out of the park!

Interviewer: I appreciate the humility. You could have said your own movie. 

Black: Do I have a Christmas movie? Which one is mine? Oh, The Holiday! Obviously The Holiday! Nancy Meyers. Genius.

When Will Ferrell appeared on The Late Late Show with James Corden in 2018, the host had many questions about the Christmas classic Elf, one of which was about the late great James Caan:

Corden: Is it true at the premiere, James Caan…

Ferrell: Yes

Corden: What did he say to you?

Ferrell: So James Caan, who once again, just getting to work with him every day, [was] kind of a pinch-me moment and he came up to me at the premiere. It had gone great. People are like, "Oh my gosh, this will be fantastic." And he's like, “Hey, I got to tell you something. Every day on set I thought you were way over the top. But now I see what you're doing. Great job.” So I just love the thought that there we were working every day and he's going back to his hotel room going, “Geez, get me out of this one.” 

Seth Meyers was one of many stars in director Garry Marshall's 2011 ensemble romantic comedy New Year's Eve. When the director passed in 2016, Meyers reminisced about working with him on the film during a segment of Late Night With Seth Meyers. The opportunity for Meyers to portray Griffin Byrne came up a few years after he wasn't cast in another project of Marshall's:

I told him, “You don’t have to put me in the movie.” He told me, “You get to be Jessica Biel’s husband." I could think of worse ways to spend the day… He was so kind, and he was so generous with his stories about the experiences he had. My favorite part of shooting the movie was when I was supposed to be running and bump into an old lady and then apologize. The woman didn't have a name, but Gary told me to use my favorite teacher's name: "Then she’ll see the movie and she’ll go, ‘Look, he remembered me!’ Isn’t that the best?”

The scene ended up being cut from the film, but Meyers recalled Marshall's idea to fix that: “What I want you to do - you gotta call that teacher and say, ‘I almost said your name in a movie!'"

Host James Corden pressed Kieran Culkin with many Home Alone questions when the Succession star appeared on The Late Late Show in 2020. Culkin's brother Macaulay played the resourceful Kevin McCallister in the Christmas film, with Kieran playing his cousin Fuller. 

Corden: Home Alone is a massive film in our house all year round really. Can you as a family sit and enjoy that movie like the rest of us? 

Culkin: Absolutely. Like every Christmas, that's just on. Yeah! I think we used to watch it a bunch even as kids so it just has that same sort of nostalgia. I didn't even know what the movie was about when we were doing it, so it was a fresh, brand-new movie when I saw it. There's a part in the movie where there's a kid who gets his head counted incorrectly and he goes, "Bye, bring me back something French!" I thought the movie was about that kid.

Culkin went on to recount when he figured out his mistake:

[I]t made sense when I saw it. I remember seeing it in the theater at the premiere and I was dying laughing and I was like, “Oh, that makes sense 'cause Mac was on set all the time.”

Jamie Lee Curtis is no stranger to expressing how she feels, but she let loose on The Graham Norton Show talking to Graham Norton about seeing 2022's Halloween Ends for the first time:

So they screened it for me, by myself. I watched it in an empty theater but I had the volume control. So I was groovy. All the talking, great, but the minute the music comes up, I’m turning it down to zero and I turn away. But, swear to god, they insisted on having a guard in the room, so that I wouldn’t pirate my own f*cking movie… I was like “Wait, what?” The guy is sitting in the back. So my entire movie, I’d turn the volume down, and I’d turn my head, but I got to listen to him. And he’d be like “Oh no, oh no!”

When Jim Carrey joined Jude Law and Tamsin Greig on The Graham Norton Show, the host asked him about a rumor that he trained with the US Navy:

Norton: You, Jim, trained with the Navy Seals? Is that made-up nonsense?

Carrey: No. I did not train with the Navy Seals. But what that might be referring to is when I did the Grinch, the makeup was like being buried alive every day.

Law: How long did it take?

Carrey: The first day was 8 ½ hours and I went back to my trailer and put my leg through the wall and I told [director] Ron Howard I couldn't do the movie. Then producer Brian Grazer came in and being the fix-it man, came up with a brilliant idea, which was to hire a gentleman who is trained to teach CIA operatives how to endure torture. And so that's how I got through The Grinch.

Carrey goes on to describe some of the methods, which include changing the TV channel, hitting himself, and smoking. He had to use a cigarette holder so the green yak hair of the costume wouldn't get burned.