Movies

Zach Braff from "Scrubs" goes behind the camera.
By Kevin Maynard

Zach Braff has a secret: He really doesn't trust doctors. "I count the diplomas on the wall," he says. "There should be at least 10." It's doubly ironic for the funny actor, 29, who so convincingly portrays hapless medical resident John "J.D." Dorian on NBC's "Scrubs." He's spent his life avoiding hospitals, and now he has a job where he works 12 hours a day, five days a week in a creepy abandoned one.

"I know every corner of that hospital," he says of the former infirmary in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley where his show will resume filming next month. "It's like The Shining."

However, Braff is quite comfortable with the branch of the profession that deals with the head. He grew up surrounded by mental health workers -- his mother and stepfather are psychologists, and his stepmom is a licensed therapist -- so he literally couldn't avoid their work. "My mom and stepfather used to see patients in the living room," says Braff, who grew up in South Orange, N.J. "I never thought twice about it until I was in high school, taking psychology. I was like, 'Oh, no -- I've been telling my parents my dreams. They must be reading into everything.' "

Now, Braff's delving further into his own psyche with his new, buzzed-about film, "Garden State," opening Wednesday in select theaters, then nationwide. Braff, who also wrote and directed the movie, plays the son of a distant shrink father (Ian Holm) who has prescribed him lithium and other bipolar medications since he was a kid. All grown up, he returns home to New Jersey and trades the dream state he's been living in for a scary dose of reality.

Braff made the movie for $2.5 million and sold it for twice that much at the Sundance Film Festival in January. He admits 75% of the story is based on real events. He went through his own mini-identity crisis after leaving home, he says, but won't elaborate much. Hanging out by the pool in his Hollywood Hills back yard, Braff comes off casual, self-assured and open. Yet even with professional listeners as parents, he's surprisingly guarded about his personal life. "I'm a sad, ceramic clown," Braff jokes, nailing his tendency to deflect questions with silly remarks.

He will say he was never prescribed psych drugs. But plenty of his friends were. "You can't be in your 20s and not know tons of people that are on them," he says of his formative years in New Jersey. "It's a revolutionary thing for my generation, for good and, in some cases, for bad."

Braff may have absorbed his semi-neurotic behavior from studying the moves of his idol, Woody Allen. His earliest memory is of his father projecting "Annie Hall" on the wall during a dinner party. So it was "surreal" when, as a newbie actor of 18, Braff snagged the plum role of the son of Allen and his longtime muse Diane Keaton in 1993's "Manhattan Murder Mystery." "He's very shy," Braff says of Allen. "Only by my last day did he warm up to me."

Braff, who's single, cast Natalie Portman in "Garden State" as his own first leading lady, the perfect Gen-Y Keaton to his Gen-X Allen. "It annoys me in romantic comedies that the dream girl is the one who is really, really hot and wears skimpy clothes," says Portman, 23. "It was so nice to see that Zach's ideal woman had all these quirks, insecurities and weirdness. A real, flawed person."

That's Braff's specialty. During a break from Northwestern University film school, he did an afterschool special called "My Summer as a Girl." ("It was a 'Tootsie.' I wore full drag," he says. "Please don't talk about it.") He worked as a production assistant on music videos for Mariah Carey and the Spice Girls -- a thankless job -- then starred in the gay ensemble comedy "The Broken Hearts Club" in 2001.

As for "Scrubs," it's a watershed that Braff only hopes will last. A quirky, absurdist look at three medical residents run amok at a county hospital, the show will be back this fall and is finding its audience. And it helped Braff get the funds together to make his movie -- which, he hopes, will make a point about his home state.

"It's called the Garden State, and that's not propaganda," Braff says. "It's a beautiful place to live."