With a knack for
scrambling, Dillon is a
single-digit handicapper.
Below: Dillon (lower right)
with his Platoon co-stars
Charlie Sheen, Tom
Berenger, Willem Dafoe
and Francesco Quinn.
been written into several episodes of the show.
“There’s a lot of lobbying to get golf written into scenes,” says Dillon. “Right now
Jerry [Ferrara, who plays Turtle] and I are
going off on [Executive Producer] Doug
Ellin because he wrote two golf scenes and
we’re not in them. Jeremy Piven, who doesn’t even play golf, gets to play with Phil Mick-leson, and Mark Wahlberg is coming back to
do a golf scene, so we’ll get to see his swing
on the show. He bombs the ball.”
Dillon has had his share of golf scenes on
the show, including hitting practice balls onto
the roofs of Hollywood Hills’ neighbors Ed
Begley Jr. and Pierce Brosnan, or using a
9-iron to punctuate his road rage on Pacific
Coast Highway in Malibu. In both scenes
Dillon’s swing looked polished, and in the case
of the vandalism on the PT Cruiser, his
follow-through was impeccable.
Kevin was born and raised in the Westchester County town of Mamaroneck, N. Y. He
was introduced to the game by his father, Paul
Dillon, the Fordham University golf coach
whose five sons, sans famous actor, Matt, play
the game. Though Kevin recalls that it was
somewhat reluctantly at first.
“He tried to push us into it,” Dillon said
of his father, who is a past president of the
Metropolitan Golf Association and currently
serves on the Executive Committee. “My
brothers and I weren’t really into it because
we didn’t think it was a sport. We played baseball, football, basketball—we’d shovel the
snow off our driveway if it meant shooting
hoops. Golf was not the hip thing to do back
then. Now it is.”
Family holiday gatherings are an excuse to
get a foursome together at Winged Foot,
where both Paul and Kevin are members.
“We have some good battles,” recalls
Dillon gleefully. “We had the Father’s Day
Massacre one year. It was my brother Brian
and me against my dad and my brother Tim.
We just destroyed them, and we’ve been
rubbing it in their faces ever since.”
After several years of keeping a home base
in New York and going out to L.A. only
when he was needed for filming, Dillon now
has reluctantly relocated to Southern California. Being out west is a necessity with the
success of Entourage, but you can see his eyes
and smile widen when he talks about New
York. He is someone who is very connected
to his roots.
Modesty is a strong trait of Dillon’s. His
character on Entourage has stolen more scenes
than a kleptomaniac at a Wal-Mart, yet he worries about his character, Johnny Drama.
“Sometimes when I read the script I am
thinking ‘How am I going to make this guy
likeable when he is being such an a------?’
Doug Ellin always tells me, ‘That’s why I
write him like that, because I know you are
going to make him likeable.’ So I guess I
should take it as a compliment. I do like his
flaws. I like that he is a wacky character. That’s
what makes him fun.”
Even with the same profession as his character, Dillon is far more stable than his alter
ego. He is 42, married to a British-born
actress, Jane Stuart, and the couple has a two-year-old daughter, Ava. He also has a daughter, 16-year-old Amy, from a previous
relationship. While Johnny Drama is fixated
with the size of his calves, eats macrobiotic
food and constantly craves attention, Dillon
loves a good cheeseburger, doesn’t have—or
want—a publicist, and got married by an Elvis
impersonator in Las Vegas, wearing jeans and
a black leather jacket.
The character does, at rare instances, intersect with Dillon. At the end of his April 2006
wedding, Dillon raised his left arm and shouted,
“Victory!” a catchphrase from Drama’s character in a television show called Viking Quest
that gave Drama 15 minutes of fame many
years ago.
The word seems to function as an introduction by fans, and Dillon hears the V-word
constantly.
“It can run up there in the fifties sometimes
if I am in a crowded place or outside somewhere,” he says. “It’s all really nice, it’s a compliment. Of course sometimes it happens at
the wrong time, like at dinner or even on the
golf course. I was lining up a putt one time
and guys on the next fairway are yelling, ‘Hey
