Friends Fame Made David Schwimmer 'Want to Hide'

David Schwimmer became a household name in 1994 thanks to the success of NBC's comedy series Friends – but it was that very fame that made the actor "want to hide under a baseball cap and not be seen."

Weeks after scoring his second Emmy nomination for his supporting role in The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story (he scored his first as Friends' Ross Geller), the 49-year-old actor revealed that becoming an instant A-lister "was pretty jarring and it messed with my relationship to other people in a way that took years, I think, for me to adjust to and become comfortable with."

"As an actor, the way I was trained, my job was to observe life and to observe other people, so I used to walk around with my head up, really engaged and watching people," Schwimmer told The Hollywood Reporter.

But although he and the fellow five members of the NBC cast had literally millions of perks from their high-profile gig, Schwimmer often felt overwhelmed by being one of TV's most recognizable faces.



"The effect of celebrity was the absolute opposite: It made me want to hide under a baseball cap and not be seen," he admitted.

"And I realized after a while that I was no longer watching people; I was trying to hide," he continued of his revelation. "So I was trying to figure out: How do I be an actor in this new world, in this new situation? How do I do my job? That was tricky."