Seth Rogen has come to embody a certain type of modern-day male: aimless and irresponsible, like an unkempt Peter Pan perpetually hovered over a big glass bong, marking time with video-game triumphs.
It is the type of life he would probably choose if it weren't for all this work.
Right now Rogen is promoting one movie (Zack and Miri Make a Porno), shooting another (Judd Apatow's Funny People) and writing a third (a remake of The Green Hornet).
"I feel like it would be nice to slow things down for a bit," he said during a telephone interview from Los Angeles.
"And in about a year and a-half I'll be able to."
Since moving to Hollywood from Vancouver nine years ago, Rogen (26), who got his start in the TV cult favourite Freaks and Geeks, has appeared in 15 movies, written three and served as a producer on four.
Although he could probably still pass unrecognised in a crowd of baby-boomers, to younger generations he has become a comic icon.
Hits such as Superbad and Pineapple Express, both of which he co-wrote and produced with long-time creative partner Evan Goldberg, have earned huge box office numbers, making him the antihero for the underachieving set. (He also starred in Pineapple Express as the pot-smoking process server and appeared in Superbad as a slacker cop.)It is a funny thing, to be the workaholic king of the slackers.
"Yeah, productivity-wise we're all very different from our characters," he said.
"But the sentiment behind them is all very similar to how we feel in real life.
"I'm not a process server who can just smoke weed in my car all day - but sometimes I wish I was."
He doesn't even get weekends off to loaf.
"When I'm not acting, I'm writing pretty much . . .
"I shoot all day, come home for a few hours, write for a couple hours after work and write a bit on the weekends sometimes," he said.
"Yeah, so, it's quite a lot."
But maybe even the most unambitious would get up off the couch for the kind of opportunities Rogen has been given.
Zack and Miri, a small-town romp touching on friendship, love and amateur porn, was conceived and directed by Kevin Smith, a hero of Rogen's and the slightly deranged mind behind Clerks and Dogma.
"I got an email one day from Kevin, kind of out of the blue, saying, `I wrote a movie for you'," Rogen recalled.
"And then I read it and I liked it, and I said, `OK, I'll be in this.' And it was pretty much as simple as that."
Once again, Rogen appears as a witty but shiftless 20-something, this time working at a coffee shop and burning utility bills for heat once the electricity in his apartment is shut off.
It is a near-replica of his previous roles, but Rogen said he was not concerned about boxing himself in.
"I really don't even think about that, to be honest," he said.
"I mean . . .I write my own movies, mostly.
"So if I really felt strongly about it I could just write a very different character for myself."
In some ways he has with The Green Hornet.
Rogen and Goldberg heard that there was a remake in the works and that the project was in need of writers.
"We've always loved superheroes and comic books and never really knew how to approach that," he recalled.
"When we heard about The Green Hornet, we thought that'd be perfect, because we really write movies about relationships.
And that's like a hero and a sidekick . . .
So we thought that was like a perfect way in for us."
Rogen, by the way, will also star in that one as the title character.
But it is the writing he prefers.
With film shoots there is a schedule, a start-time, a need for continued focus.
But with writing, he said, "you can just stay at home and do it . . .
You can stop and play video games for an hour and then start doing it again".
But the acting paid better and there was something fun, he admitted, in seeing himself on screen.
Plus, he is pretty good at it, particularly in parts that allow for improvising.
Not surprisingly, offers have rolled in over the past couple of years and his strategy for choosing among them is this: "I have one very, very simple career rule and that is to try to only be in movies that I would be excited to go see myself in theatres."
