Acting also energizes this stand-up guy

By Jerry Fink

Friday, Jan. 2, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Poverty made Mike Epps run.

“I grew up poor,” he says. “When you grow up poor, you have to entertain yourself to keep from being hungry.”

The 38-year-old actor and comedian took a break in Los Angeles to talk by phone about his busy schedule and about his engagement at the Orleans tonight and Saturday. He slips in and out of character throughout the interview.

“I’m a Jamaican,” he says in a thick accent. “ ‘Hey, mon. I got many jobs. I have 13 kids.’ ”

Epps was one of nine children in a single-mother household. He had a built-in audience that helped him develop his comedic skills early.

He says his drive and ambition grew out of that environment.

“Ever since I was a kid I’ve been a hard worker,” he says. “I used to lie to my mother that the NBA came to the school to watch me play basketball. She acted like she didn’t know I was lying, but she knew.”

He was a class clown who went from entertaining his classmates to entertaining millions.

Epps began performing stand-up comedy as a teenager and became a regular at the Comedy Act Theater in Atlanta. From there he went to New York and joined the Def Comedy Jam on tour and on HBO. He was with Jam from 1992 to 1997.

He took a break to explore the film world, making his debut in Vin Diesel’s “Strays.”

Ice Cube discovered him and cast him in “Next Friday” (the sequel to the 1995 hit “Friday”). Since then they’ve made several projects together, including “Friday After Next” and “All About the Benjamins.”

The two pair up again in “Janky Promoters,” due to be released this year.

“Me and Ice Cube, doing a little movie about two promoters trying to get some money together to do a little show. I think you’re going to like it,” Epps says. “People like to see me and Ice Cube hook back up, from doing all the ‘Friday’ movies and stuff. I think everybody will enjoy seeing me and Ice Cube hook up again.

“ ‘Next Friday’ was the first film we did together. I didn’t know Ice Cube before then. I heard he was auditioning for the movie. He came to see me do stand-up. He liked it. From there we’ve been rolling ever since.”

Epps appears in two other films set for release this year — “Next Day Air,” with Wood Harris, Debbie Allen and Mos Def, and “Hangover,” directed by Todd Phillips of “Old School” and filmed in Las Vegas.

“The movie’s about four guys who go to a bachelor party with their friend to Vegas and get real wasted,” Epps says. “I come out to Vegas just to work, you know what I mean. It’s a fun spot, but I have fun when I’m working. I don’t want to have too much fun, I might end up in the Vegas county jail, like O.J.”

Epps also released a Christmas comedy album, “Bad Santa,” with rapper Jim Jones.

He has no preference between his stand-up comedy and acting.

“I think both of them complement each other, you know what I mean?” he says.

He has never written a film script, but he does do some script doctoring on his films.

“I write on spec, you know what I mean?” he says. “When I get a movie I’m allowed to write my (stuff) right there on the deck to make it better. A lot of these movies need flavor ... You get the script and it’ll be OK, but it be needing that flavor.”

Epps’ early influences were Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor. “The same suspects.”

He hasn’t met Murphy, but he was able to spend some time with Pryor before the legendary comedian died in December 2005.

“I got picked to play Richard Pryor in a movie and I sat with him a whole year before he died. Sat with the king,” he says, referring to a Pryor biopic that was to have been released in 2007 but remains on hold. “I was in the last movie with Bernie Mac before he died — ‘Soul Man’ with Bernie Mac, Samuel Jackson and Isaac Hayes, who just passed.”

He was among a wide range of performers who appeared in “Richard Pryor: The Funniest Man Dead or Alive,” a 30-minute special that ran on BET television about a week after Pryor died of a heart attack.

When Epps performs in Las Vegas, he says, he doesn’t adjust his act.

“A person like me, I sell my personality more than anything,” he says. “People are coming to see me. They like good jokes. They like to hear good jokes. They like to hear my punch lines and (stuff), but I’m a personality guy. A lot of people like to come and check out my personality.”

He invites his fans to come check out his personality and his jokes.

“I think you all need to come out and get the laugh of your life. I ain’t talking about nothing but marriages and relationships and Obama being the president and McCain with them little bitty arms.”