Issue date: July 16, 2000

by Jeffrey Zaslow

Jason Biggs bits

He's hot: After Loser, he stars in Saving Silverman with Amanda Peet and Prozac Nation with Christina Ricci. That hat: In Loser, he wears a weird winter hunting hat. Will he start a summer fashion trend? "No, but maybe it'll take off this winter, when the movie comes out on video." When his time's up: "I'm sure my obituary will mention the pie" from American Pie

ur culture exalts winners. Call it "The Michael Jordan Syndrome." Yet at the same time, mobs of Americans -- maybe most -- personally identify with the most hopeless losers. Call it "The Jason Biggs Factor."

For the current generation of teens, Biggs personifies the loser life with a display of embarrassing desperation unprecedented in film history. In last summer's raunchy blockbuster American Pie, he played a teen who couldn't get a date and ended up getting amorous with an apple pie. Now he's back, co-starring with American Beauty's Mena Suvari in the romantic comedy Loser.

Watching Biggs in the title role, moviegoers can't help but embrace their inner nerd, says Loser writer-director Amy Heckerling (Clueless). What connects them to Biggs? "He's got gigantic brown eyes that are so vulnerable and accessible. You could just jump in and take a swim."

Biggs, 22, says he works on honing "a sympathetic quality, so I can play the outcast and yet have audiences root for me." Deep down, he knows, almost everyone feels like a loser. "Even the homecoming queen wonders, 'Does he like me for who I am as a person or because I have a crown on my head?' "

Growing up in New Jersey, Biggs did commercials at age 5; by 13, he was on Broadway with Judd Hirsch in Conversations With My Father. But back at school, he knew how it felt to be mocked and rejected. Kids laughed at him for being an actor, and until he was 17, he was very short. "Kids called me 'Smalls.' I got picked on all the time."

Perhaps that accounts for the empathy Biggs has for the winning-impaired. "Some kids think that if they belittle others they'll feel bigger. But I was raised to treat everyone as equals. Who are we to judge who's a loser and who's a winner?" Biggs tells kids to be nice to those they'd dismiss, and not just because losers, as the saying goes, will grow up to be their bosses. "I'm a big believer in karma. What goes around comes around."

In Loser, Biggs plays a nerdy college student who dares to be different and gets dumped on by his peers. Heckerling predicts audiences will feel an emotional swell when Biggs and Suvari kiss. "We all identify with the losers," the director says. "That's why in movies we always want the underdog to get a happy, wonderful romance. We want him to get his kiss."

Contributing Editor Jeffrey Zaslow is an advice columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Photo Credit: WAYNE A. HÖECHERL for USA WEEKEND