Jason Bateman “stopped by” Jimmy Kimmel Live! where the Ozark actor revealed he was already prepared for our current pandemic thanks to a hand-washing technique he picked up from a certain Leonardo DiCaprio film.
While video-calling from his home office, the already hygienic Bateman joked that not much has changed for him as he’s already very skilled at sprinting the other direction whenever someone sneezes. But he took things a bit further when he revealed to Kimmel that his normal hand-washing routine is based off of DiCaprio’s performance in The Aviator.
“The big one that I incorporated, and I learned this from Mr. Leonardo DiCaprio in the Howard Hughes movie, where he scrapes his hands with his fingernails so that you get the soap underneath the fingernails,” Bateman told Kimmel. “It’s pretty genius.”
As history buffs know, during the final years of his life, Hughes became an intense germophobic recluse as his mental health severely declined, so naturally, Kimmel seemed a bit concerned by this information. “So you are taking your hand-washing tips from an actor who is channeling a lunatic, a recluse? Someone who died insane.” Not missing a beat, Bateman helpfully added that Hughes also had “famously long fingernails” just to make his confession even more strange.
But the interview went elsewhere, and Bateman shared humorous anecdotes about prepping for Easter under quarantine and how he’s struggling with his daughter Maple’s second grade schoolwork thanks to his years being a child actor where education wasn’t exactly a concern. Speaking of Maple, you can see her walking around in the background during the whole interview, so it was only a matter of time until she started knocking on the window and waving at Jimmy.
“I keep her outside,” Bateman joked. “That way there’s more food for me inside the house.
