Born in September 1977 in Portland, Oregon, Joel's rise to success began all the way back in his childhood, as a defence against the neighbourhood bullies who picked on him. As he says:
"When I was really young, I realised that making people laugh was a way not to get beat up. It was an easy way out. Ultimately, as I got older, I was always sort of interested in the entertainment industry, but I didn't know how to get involved in Portland, Oregon."
Armed with a set of head shots, Joel approached a small agency in Portland.
"I did some crazy Jim Carrey impersonation so they took me on and I did some very small stuff, commercials and one liners".
Majoring in drama at college, he eventually worked his way to Los Angeles after a couple of years working with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the rest, as they say, is history.
Following his role in Hatchet, which was written and detected by Adam Green, Joel and Adam decided that their next project would be Spiral. A film intriguingly described as the unlikely pairing of Alfred Hitchcock and Woody Allen.
Shot in 2007, Spiral breathes new, imaginative life into the psychological thriller genre and promises an unforgettable journey into the heart and mind of darkness.. The film also brought a fresh challenge, as Joel co-wrote the screenplay with Jeremy Danial Boering, co directed with Adam Green and starred, heading a cast that includes Zachary Levi (TV's "Chuck") and Tricia Helfer ( Battlestar Galactica).
Co directing, like any creative venture, can put a strain on a friendship. When I spoke to Adam green some time ago, I asked how they managed to work together in presenting a cohesive vision of what they wanted to achieve.
Adam told me:
"The way we went about it was that we spent a solid month and a half sitting together creating a Production Bible. It was like a novel, filled with everything we wanted to do. We both knew exactly what we wanted to accomplish, and we were both there all the time."
Joel added:
"Adam & I got on so well on "Hatchet" that we were pretty concerned about co-directing. Would it be a strain on our relationship ? We went in hoping there'd be no issues or conflict and we came out with flying colours. There was one "discussion". We talked it out and talked it out, but really so much work had been done beforehand, it wasn't really an issue.
It was the other things like losing the light, too many pages to film in one day, so you have to decide which scenes to cut so you can keep on schedule.
We only had an 18 day shooting schedule.
We played a lot on Adam's expertise".
Privately funded, the film was completed with no studio interference. As Joel says, the idea was always that they would make the film, and THEN get a distribution company involved. Winning the main award at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, the film makers received several offers for distribution before settling on Anchor Bay.
Joel takes the role of "Mason" a reclusive, outcast telemarketer with an artistic talent, who is befriended by a new female co-worker. Mason, however has a darkness about him and suffers horrific nightmares of his past.
As several of Joel's roles have a comedic aspect to them, I asked him how different was his preparation for this role.
"I went out and killed some girls. It was good to get the aggression out (laughs).
Seriously, I did a lot of documentary studies on the crazies and I brought a lot in myself.
I'm kind of a strange guy. I have a lot of "ticks" and "schisms" that I bring to the character. Clicking my teeth is something I do when I'm nervous, so I brought that in and magnified it. Also, Mason thinks he has asthma. We don't really explain whether he has, or whether it's all in his mind, but when he has his panic attacks he clutches him inhaler as a comforter - little things like that, and holding his breath until he calms himself down. So with all that, out came Mason, an innocent, crazy character. But he never loses his innocence. He has to be endearing and likable as a lead character, so you can follow his story and like him even - if he IS creepy."
Bones is one of the hottest TV shows of the past five years. Based on the best selling books by Kathy Reichs, it features the investigations of a squad of highly skilled forensic pathologists led by Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) who work with ex sniper, now FBI agent Seely Booth (David Boreanez). Joel guests on a semi regular basis as comically neurotic Emo lab assistant Colin Fisher.
Sharp eyed viewers would know that Bones isn't the first time Joel has worked alongside Boreanez. Back in 2003, during Angel's fourth season, Joel appeared in an episode called "Salvage" as a one-off character named Karl Vamp. Though, as time has gone relentlessly on, neither actor could quite remember the details of the episode when their paths crossed again:
"It's funny, when I talked to him again, I told him that I'd done an Angel episode - I can't remember what it was about, and he couldn't exactly place which one it was. In further review we kind of figured out the scene that we were doing."
As Joel's role is on a kind of rota with several other lab assistants guesting, when can we expect to see the return of Mr Fisher to the Jeffersonian Lab?
"It's all based on schedule. I love the show and I love the people on it and show creator Hart Hanson and I get along swimmingly. So, any time there's an availability, absolutely, I will come back."
Currently vying for shelf space with Spiral and Bones season box sets in DVD stores around the world is THE motion picture event of recent years, James Cameron's Avatar. The most expensive film ever made, with a budget of $237,000,000, which has already recouped $740,440,000 in the USA alone. Those figures are staggering. I asked Joel what difference having a prominent role in the biggest film on the planet had made. Was he being offered bigger parts in bigger productions? Had his paycheck increased? As ever, his response was candid and realistic:
"Oh, I'm hoping, you know? It's all a little new. Obviously it does have a bump and it does change things, being in something like this. It can also turn into a franchise. I consider it a blessing. I want to consider my career as a business and figure out what the right moves are to make. While Avatar is an amazing accomplishment, I'm not going to just sit down and wait for things to happen. I'm neurotic about free time. I don't like too much of it (laughs).
As if to demonstrate this, the busy actor has already completed his next horror movie, a film called Julia X:
"Julia X is a 3D movie. Its a dark thriller. I'm not one of the leads, I play a really interesting, fun role. It was a fun role for me to play because I play the victim. I've never really played the victim in a movie before. My character has a very interesting....but I don't want to give too much away (laughs). It's a killer movie turned on its head"
Despite his busy schedule as an actor in demand, Joel isn't neglecting his love of directing. Byron Phillips Found is a short movie, one of Joel's pet projects which he has both written and directed. It also reunites Joel with a co-star from Spiral:
"Zachary Levy plays the lead. He plays Byron, a guy who has an enlarging of the heart, so he has surgery to fix it. Because of this condition, sufferers have a lot of heart attacks and this is what happens in the story. But it's a fantastical light comedy. He ends up dying for 12 seconds and in that 12 seconds, he believes that he has lost his soul, so he's on the search for his soul. But he finds that his soul has taken a liking to the girl that he is in love with - or would be in love with had he had a soul."
As for the future - it's looking remarkably bright. Joel has just finished filming a pilot for a TV show called Nathan Versus Nurture with Bill Pullman.
"It has a lot going for it, but it's a pilot and 90 percent of pilots don't get picked up, so I don't have all my eggs in one basket".
Hatchet, Spiral, Bones and Avatar are all available on DVD.
