Drain monsters, handmade fireplaces, and throwing gourds at crowds are the least of
Matthew Gray Gubler's quirks. What else don't you know about Hollywood's favorite weirdo?
It seems like Matthew Gray Gubler is constantly creating new things, and one of his perhaps
lesser-known projects was creating tote bags for the American Red Cross in 2015. He told Glamour,
"A lot of bummers are going on in the world,
and the Red Cross helps everyone, and I just wanted to do something to spread some cheer.
So I made a 'I love the universe' picture and figured I could give the proceeds to that."
Gubler went on to explain that he
also ended up creating children's blankets for the charity saying,
"Every blanket sold, one will be given to a kid in need.
I like the idea of giving things to people in need."
It's pretty incredible to see how Gubler uses his creative mind to help others.
Is there anything Matthew Gray Gubler hasn't tried? Well, based on the fact that his creative
work has extended into making stuffed animals, our guess is, no. In his Vanity Fair house tour,
he showed off various puppets, including a bright pink octopus with wide eyes and jagged teeth.
"This is a octopus because there's one — if there were two it would be octopi."
Gubler's love of stuffed animals extends to his everyday life, too.
In fact, in 2018, he tweeted an image of his backpack containing a teddy bear saying,
"Heads up, I always have a small teddy bear in my backpack."
While we aren't too sure how true this is, knowing Gubler,
we wouldn't be surprised if he did have a permanent backpack teddy!
One of Matthew Gray Gubler's other creative outlets is painting and drawing.
As you can probably imagine, his artistic work is just as eccentric as he is.
His main interest seems to be in drawing portraits. In an interview with Buzzfeed,
the actor explained that he prefers to display his work on his website in a section called
the "Museum" instead of showing it to people in person, saying,
"I've had instances where I've painted beautiful portraits for, like, a girlfriend or someone,
and they're just like, they look at it with a grimace and they're like,
'This is terrible. I don't look like this, and you're awful, and you must hate me.' And
I'm crushed by it, so I kind of am weird about being in the room when it's shown."
To be honest, it's not surprising that many of Gubler's subjects don't quite understand his work!
When it comes to film and TV, Matthew Gray Gubler doesn't just
thrive in front of the camera — he also enjoys getting behind the camera, too.
In fact, over the years, the actor directed a total of 12 episodes of "Criminal Minds."
He has also directed several music videos and short films in his time, too.
For Gubler, directing is one of his "main loves in life." The first time he directed "Criminal
Minds," Gubler was slightly overwhelmed. He recalled to Entertainment Weekly,
"The first time around, I was so overly prepared,
I was not prepared to act in my own episode. I was like, 'What the hell?'"
However, over the years, Gubler became more and more comfortable in the director's chair.
After all, Gubler had initially wanted to be a director, not an actor. In fact,
he trained at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts' film school and only
got into acting by chance. He told The Hollywood Reporter,
"My peers knew I liked acting, so they'd be like,
'Go get that guy Gubler. He'll be in your student film.'"
It's no wonder that Gubler wanted to get back
to his roots and direct a few episodes of the show, though.
After graduating from film school,
Matthew Gray Gubler didn't start auditioning straight away. In fact,
his first steps into Hollywood were as an intern to none other than Wes Anderson. He told AnOther,
"I don't like to go 'medium' on anything. When I had to get an internship to graduate
from film school, there was an easy way to do it, but I thought:
'F— it! Wes Anderson's in New York and he's my favorite film maker!'"
Apparently, Gubler wasn't an amazing intern. He said about himself,
"Actually, I was the worst intern ever! Like,
he would send me on shopping runs and I wouldn't know what couscous was, and ... I don't know."
Even if Gubler wasn't a great intern, Anderson clearly saw something in him. In fact,
he even cast him as an intern in his film, "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou."
"How you holding up there, intern? You ok?"
He told Backstage,
"I owe him my acting career. He's the best. It's
a beautiful film that I'm so proud to have been a part of."
To add to his collection of creative projects, in 2019, Matthew Gray Gubler became an
author with his first children's book, "Rumple Buttercup," which told the story of a Gubler-ian
monster who lived in a drain. So how did he come up with this monster? He told Parade,
"Every morning I wake up and try to think of new ways to make things.
Rumple popped into my head a few years ago, and I, basically, wrote the book for anyone
who's ever felt like they didn't quite fit in, just to make them know that they're not alone."
Apparently, Gubler was inspired by his own childhood. As a kid, he explained,
he never quite fit in. Using Rumple Buttercup, Gubler hoped to send a
message to children that it's okay to be different. He continued to tell Parade,
"I knew that I was different, and so this book,
to me, has always been more about embracing individuality as opposed to he's weird."
Long before acting or directing became his ambition, Matthew Gray
Gubler was fascinated by the world of magic. He told The West Australian,
"I wanted to be a magician when I was a child. Then I found the
magic of filmmaking and loved acting in my own stupid movies."
In a 2019 tweet, Gubler opened up about his childhood as an aspiring magician.
Alongside images of him as a young magician, he wrote,
"The best thing about being a 12 year old self employed magician with a pantry full of home-made
jester hats was the free training I got magically escaping from all the lockers I was stuffed in."
These days, Gubler focuses more on acting than on magic — but he
still likes to perform magic from time to time. He told Newsday,
"I would love to do more magic. ... I love ghost stories. I've had a lot
of cool experiences with ghosts. My hope is to create a sort of merger,
doing some kind of magic show. ... hopefully relating with like ghosts or Halloween."
"Head back.
Up the nose. That's more your character. That's more your character. Nathan's character."
Unsurprisingly, Gubler has his own unique, creative approach to acting. He told Backstage,
"For a character, I actually sketch them and create a painting of what they look
like — a physical painting — and I keep that with me. I feel like through that
I often capture nuances of the face, like, muscles in the face. And I let that seep in."
Then, Gubler works on creating the "richest, most thorough backstory anyone ever had"
so that he understands his character's past. This way,
he feels like he knows how his character would respond to any given situation. He continued,
"I know how they would react to someone waving to them at the mall. I know if they
had a bar mitzvah if they're Jewish; I know what the theme for their bar mitzvah was."
With all of this preparation, by the time Gubler gets in front of the camera,
the character comes so naturally, he doesn't even have to worry about "acting."
Matthew Gray Gubler has always been eccentric. In fact,
even as a child he felt like an outcast. But for Gubler,
being an outsider has always been a blessing rather than a curse. He told The Rogue Magazine,
"I have always been an outsider and my favorite people are outsiders. Being ostracized a lot as
a kid taught me early on that it doesn't matter what people think about you."
He learned to see the value in people who didn't try too hard to impress anyone. He continued,
"With the risk of sounding pretentious, all I strive for in everything I do is sincerity."
Throughout his career, he explained, he's hoped to help other outsiders feel better about themselves.
"I just want to make those that feel like outcasts feel like they belong somewhere."
At this point, you probably won't be surprised to hear that Matthew Gray Gubler doesn't exactly
have the most normal things in his bag on a day-to-day basis. In an interview
with BUILD Series, the actor revealed some of the oddities he likes to carry around.
First of all, Gubler has what almost looks like a child's backpack.
He explained what was in his bag,
"I have a hat, it's very important to stay warm. You lose 90 percent of
your body heat from your head and neck, ladies and germs."
Then, he pulled out a set of colored pencils, a gourd - which he threw into the audience - his
book's artwork, walnuts, a journal, and Ray Bradbury's "Something Wicked This Way Comes."
"Masterpiece of a book — if you love October and you love reading, then you'll love this book."
It's pretty interesting to take a peek inside Gubler's bag — and
we're hardly surprised by the mishmash of creative and practical items he carries.
During a tour with Vanity Fair,
Matthew Gray Gubler showed off some of the "weird stuff" in his haunted treehouse home.
Gubler began by showing off his "kimono closet," then went on
to describe how he redesigned the house to match the spooky Victorian exterior.
He even insisted on building his own fireplace, saying:
"The masons who were doing it were kind of too skilled
and I wanted it to look like a drunk gnome had built it in the 1800s."
His home is also filled with memorabilia from some of his roles,
including original artwork from "The Life Aquatic."