Jack Black can’t stop making movies

DETROIT — He’s a little bit heavy metal, a little bit Tasmanian devil, and the style of high-energy comedy he’s perfected over the last 30-plus years has made Jack Black one of Hollywood’s biggest stars.

Gen Xers and millennials love him for his roles in “High Fidelity” and “School of Rock” and as the front man for comic rock band Tenacious D, while their kids love him for his voice roles in the “Kung Fu Panda” and “Super Mario Bros.” movies.

Now, as he’s getting ready to launch his latest video game crossover, “A Minecraft Movie,” Black says he’s eyeing the finish line of his career.

“I can see retirement,” says Black, on the phone from his Los Angeles home last month. “Dude, honestly, I’ve been feeling like this is my last movie. But I’ve been feeling like that for years! Because it’s been such an inside ride, it’s been such an incredible journey, and I feel like my cup runneth over. I’ve been way too fortunate, and I feel like it can’t continue. It’s gotta stop sometime.

“But I just keep on going,” he says. “As long as people keep on calling me up with cool things that I can’t say no to, I’m like f— it, I’m doing it. And this was one of those.”

“A Minecraft Movie,” in theaters now, is the film version of the massively popular video game, which has been recognized by Guinness as the bestselling video game of all-time, with more than 300 million units sold around the world. (It may be eclipsed by “Tetris,” but the original Russian game’s various licenses make its overall sales difficult to pinpoint.)

Black stars as Steve, an expert gamer who lives inside the world of the block-building video game, who helps a team of misfits — including a washed-up video game prodigy (Jason Momoa) and a brother-sister duo (Sebastian Hansen and Emma Myers) — escape the confines of the Minecraft realm in which they find themselves trapped.

It lets Black do his manic, wide-eyed physical humor, and it reteams him with Jared Hess, who directed him in the oddball wrestling comedy “Nacho Libre” nearly 20 years ago.

“It’s one of those where you have to say yes, you have to do it,” says Black. “I’m at the level in my career where I only do it if I have to do it.”

It’s a level he’s been building toward his whole life.

Putting on a show

Although he doesn’t come from a showbiz family — both his parents were satellite engineers living in the greater LA area — Black was a born performer.

“I liked putting on a show early on,” says the 55-year-old, who was raised in Hermosa Beach, Calif. “I remember when I was very little, I would put on shows for my parents. I remember I had a one-man show that I did for them that was just the life of a human. I started from my birth, and I went through all the way until I was an old man and died. And that all took place in the course of, like, three minutes.”

He remembers his parents’ laughter while he was performing, “and I got such a thrill from that,” he says. It’s a reaction he’d go on to chase his entire career.

The first movie he remembers seeing in the theater was the 1976 comedic whodunit “Murder by Death” — he was 7 years old — and he remembers the audience’s hysterical laughter echoing throughout the auditorium. “There was just something magical about it,” he says.

He took improv classes when he was still in his single digit years, and his first proper play was in a summer theater camp in Idlewild, Calif., several hours north of L.A., where he played the title role in “The Wizard of Oz.” He also played Bilbo Baggins in either “The Hobbit” or “Lord of the Rings” — he can’t remember which — and he was hooked. “I had the bug from early on,” he says.

“I can’t think of anything more fun than putting on a show and making people laugh,” says Black, who today has nearly 70 movie credits to his name. “Obviously it has something to do with getting attention, but it also has something to do with telling stories, and making sense of this world. It’s very satisfying.”

Breaking through

Black says his performance style was influenced by John Belushi and Chris Farley, fellow comic big men who used their size to become over-the-top, larger-than-life figures.

He developed the manic persona we most closely associate with Jack Black — loud and boisterous, given to outsize physical gestures and eyebrow arches, known for abbreviating random phrases (“junior bacon chee!”) just for kicks — while he was writing for his heavy metal folk rock project Tenacious D, which came after his Hollywood breakthrough didn’t come as quickly as he’d hoped.

Black made his big-screen debut in “Bob Roberts,” after director Tim Robbins cast him in “a great little part” in his 1992 political comedy, “not enough to be a ‘big break,’ but I did get a little hand-hold,” he says.

He then did a series of small roles — “Demolition Man,” “The NeverEnding Story III,” a part in “True Romance” that was cut from the final film — but when Bob Odenkirk and David Cross saw Tenacious D perform, they remembered Black from “Bob Roberts,” and asked him to appear on their HBO sketch comedy series, “Mr. Show,” which launched in 1995.

“Tenacious D” — “kind of like a Smothers Brothers vibe, but more rockin’,” is how Black describes the long-running project with his comic partner Kyle Gass — became its own HBO series in 1997, and quickly became a cult hit.

It was another step toward truly breaking through in the mainstream, which Black finally did with 2000’s “High Fidelity,” the romantic comedy where he played sidekick to John Cusack. He was cast in the movie after Cusack and director Stephen Frears saw his work in “Tenacious D” and thought he’d be a good fit for the role of snarky record store clerk Barry Judd.

“That was the part that put me on the map,” says Black, who was 30 when “High Fidelity” hit theaters. “I remember going to that premiere and the party afterwards, I was there with my mom, and George Clooney came up and said, ‘Hey, you’re f—ing great in this movie.’ I was like, ‘Oh, s—, something’s different now!’ And then the world was never the same.”

Black graduated to leading man status with 2001’s “Shallow Hal,” and he hit a career high in Richard Linklater’s “School of Rock,” the 2003 comedy in which he led a classroom full of elementary school kids to their rock and roll dreams.

“With ‘School of Rock,’ he owns that film. Talk about the perfect part for him,” says John Monaghan, programmer and volunteer at the Redford Theatre, which showed “School of Rock” in 2023 for the film’s 20th anniversary. “In ‘School of Rock’ it all comes together. It’s charming, it’s funny, it’s rock and roll, too. And totally family friendly, especially the way he works with those kids.”

For Black, “School of Rock” endures even outside of movie circles. “My favorite is the kids who started playing music from watching ‘School of Rock,’” Black says. “That’s better than any kind of award.”

Doing it for the love

The two decades since “School of Rock” have seen Black star in blockbusters (“King Kong,” the “Jumanji” movies), indies (“Bernie,” “Margot at the Wedding”), rom-coms (“The Holiday”) and movies for kids (the “Kung Fu Panda” series, “Goosebumps”). His films have grossed more than $9 billion at the worldwide box office.

He’s also appeared on many TV shows, including “Saturday Night Live,” where he returns as host earlier this month. It’s was his fourth time hosting, and first since 2005.

He’s written just one movie, 2006’s “Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny,” but it holds a special place in his heart.

“I had a great experience on that, even though no one went to see it,” he says of the big-screen adventure that reunited him with Tim Robbins and also featured a cast that included Meat Loaf, Ronnie James Dio, Ben Stiller, Amy Adams and Dave Grohl as Satan. “It didn’t make any money in the theater, but it kind of lives on over the decades. ‘Cult classic’ is a fun category if you can get in there; in some ways it’s more satisfying than a big hit that goes away after a couple years.”

Black is married to Tanya Haden, with whom he has two teenage children. He says he’d love to one day do Broadway, either writing something new or reviving an old show.

He certainly doesn’t sound like he’s got retirement on his mind — he just wrapped “Anaconda” due out later this year — and that performer bug inside him is still driving him.

“The only ingredient that really matters is how much you love it,” Black says.