The extreme minimalist life of Pete Campbell, "Mad Men" actor

Vincent Kartheiser, he actor who plays the weasely Pete Campbell on Mad Men, has taken simple living to an extreme. He lives in a "an empty wooden box" in Hollywood without even a toilet.

From The Guardian:

"Like, I don't have a toilet at the moment. My house is just a wooden box. I mean I am planning to get a toilet at some point. But for now I have to go to the neighbors. I threw it all out." (As he says this, I'm wondering whether this is just another of the parts Kartheiser might be trying on for size, but to prove the point he later takes me back to his house, which really is an empty wooden box, a small one-room bungalow on a nondescript Hollywood street and indeed it has no lavatory.) Is that a Buddhist thing, I wonder, or an early midlife crisis thing?

"It started a couple of years ago," he says. "It was in response to going to these Golden Globe type events and they just give you stuff. You don't want it. You don't use it. And then Mad Men started to become a success on a popular level and people started sending me stuff, just boxes of shit. Gifts for every holiday, clothes. One day, I looked around and thought 'I don't want this stuff, I didn't ask for it'. So I started giving it to friends or charity stores, or if it is still in its box I might sell it for a hundred bucks. I liked it so I didn't stop."

Does he have a bed?

"I do," he concedes, "but that might go…"

Vincent Kartheiser profiled in The Guardian

• [TheWillow]

  don’t care, not going to forgive him (or Joss) for the travesty that was Connor.

  • [Avram / Moderator]

    Oh, man. I’d recognized that Joan was played by the same actress who’d played Saffron on Firefly, but I’d somehow missed that Pete was Angel‘s Connor.

    • [TheWillow]

      It’s amazing to me how often ex-Whedon actors work together- they pop up a lot as guest stars in projects that feature other Whedon actors (e.g. Castle and How I Met Your Mother).

      In useless information news, Christina Hendricks actually went to my high school (albeit about 10 years before I did). My theater teacher wouldn’t shut up about her even before she did anything on TV.

• [Rick.]

  I kinda admire this in some way. But at the same time, it seems only rich people would do shit like this. Not because they have to but because they can.

  Tell you one thing though: I’d eventually get pretty goddamn annoyed if my rich actor neighbor came over to my house twice daily to use the head.

  • [Anonymous]

    This man is most certainly peeing in the sink.

• [Anonymous]

  Well, when you get raised in a demon dimension, you learn to live a simple life without attachment to physical objects.

  • [Anonymous]

    HAHAHHAHHAHAA….Oh Connor…

• [sterling]

  I agree with you Rick. Sure sounds interesting, but the minute he has to start worrying about a mortgage and whether the kids are clothed and fed this lifestyle might not be so much fun. Of course I’m probably just bitter because I have bills and kids and I could never even consider living in a box without a toilet in Hollywood…

  • [Anonymous]

    “The moment he has to start worrying about paying the mortgage and whether the kids are clothed and fed…”

    How does not having things make it any more difficult to pay the mortgage? Or feeding or clothing children for that matter?

    I mean, presumably he eats food and wears clothes himself.

    I don’t mean to insult you, but I seriously think your reactionary response is merely a knee-jerk justification, a shallow excuse for a reason, to keep you from legitimately asking yourself whether you need that crap either… Really think about it.

  • [Chesterfield]

    Sterling, I understand how this would be difficult with kids, but what does having a mortgage have to do with anything?

  • [Gloria]

    Having kids isn’t an inevitability for everyone. Telling someone “you wouldn’t be able to do this if you had kids” isn’t terribly helpful because, well, yes, some people *don’t* have kids.

    Not saying one choice is better than another … just that they are all still things you have to choose to do in order for them to happen :)

• [shadowfirebird]

  I could live like this (okay, not the toilet) but only provided it was temporary.

  The idea of giving up the books and music I’ve fallen in love with over the years would be unbearably painful.

  If they were waiting safe for me somewhere, then I’d be happy (and only a little bored) with a bed, a computer I could program connected to the internet, and a bathroom. Oh, and the guitar I’m supposed to be learning to play…

• [bangpound]

  Is it legal to live in a house in Hollywood without a toilet? This sounds like a matter for the public health authorities.

  • [nutbastard]

    “Is it legal to live in a house in Hollywood without a toilet? This sounds like a matter for the public health authorities.”

    Is it a worthy use of public resources to police the plumbing arrangements inside of a mans home?

    • [tad604]

      Yes. Next question?

    • [Stefan Jones]

      If it has a deleterious effect on public health, it might be.

      Your freedom to take a dump where you want to ends at my water supply.

      • [KremlinLaptop]

        So let us say the man — instead of going to his neighbours — poops into plastic bags and seals them in his house. Hell, let’s say he has a pooping room where he perches and pops one out on to the floor.

        How… exactly does it get from there to your water supply? I’m not saying the palace of poop is an attractive or sanitary thing, I wouldn’t want it around, but people being very concerned about a man’s bowel movements just reeks of being a bit silly.

        The man has no crapper, he goes over to his neighbours house to poop — this is sub-optimal, but it ain’t gonna affect public health in the area beyond his neighbour getting annoyed I imagine.

• [snakedart]

  It doesn’t matter whose toilet you poop in — it still goes in the same place. Throwing away yours isn’t going to save anything.

  • [Anonymous]

    I don’t think he threw the toilet away to try to be green or whatever. This seems more like a personal dynamic exercise. Sure, it’s odd, but it could have been a lot worse.

• [toilet]

  Think of how easy moving would be if we didn’t need to bring our toilets with us.

• [muteboy]

  A thing like that.

• [Anonymous]

  He doesn’t want a toilet but still needs and uses one. How is this minimalism? This is not about having kids or family or any such thing. This is a douche du jour saying something that will make him appear to be deep and his bs is getting printed only because he is on a hit show. In a few yrs when the show is over, he will be yet another guy trying to get meetings with some D girls.
  Can this guy be any more pretentious? Does he choose to walk barefoot in those $700 “barefoot shoes” or whatever the newest fashionable thing is?

• [xyglyx]

  Matthew 13:12 FTW.

• [xyglyx]

  I wish I had his problems.

• [Anonymous]

  I could probably live with just a few boxes of stuff, as long as one of them had a laptop and some maxed out 2TB hard drives.

• [Anonymous]

  He should maybe download a copy of “The Humanure Handbook,” and read it. Along with a plan for dealing with human waste simply and sustainably, it’s one of the better sources I’ve read on how to run a compost pile.

  If there is ever a disruption in water service, his life will be better for lack of a flush toilet, and the neighbors might have to use his facilities.

  In Hollywood, I might recommend that the cover material be coffee chaff, if there’s a business nearby that roasts beans.

• [Deidzoeb]

  I’m calling hoax, or maybe significant details of the story left out (by Kartheiser or The Guardian, who knows).

  If you’re trying to avoid material things, do you remove toilet and kitchen from your home, or move somewhere without them? Are lights or doors too materialistic?

  Would you count it a success in your quest to avoid materialism if you’re using your neighbor’s toilet (or other possessions) instead of your own? If owning a toilet is actually too materialistic, then wouldn’t you come up with some viable long-term solution, maybe a pit latrine with lots of compost materials?

  Dude must be getting his house remodeled and mentioned the toilet as a joke. Maybe he’s really going minimalist, but this is just silly.

• [Anonymous]

  I currently live somewhat close to this. T-shirts and a pair of jeans, bed, table and 2 chairs, some dishes. I make ok money, am not doing it for any reason except I hate having so much stuff, and I also don’t have kids or a wife which might be hard when both occur. Possessions are suffocating and I honestly have never been happier since I got rid of most my stuff.

• [simonbarsinister]

  As Pulp (and William Shatner) said:

  Rent a flat above a shop,
  cut your hair and get a job.
  Smoke some fags and play some pool,
  pretend you never went to school.
  But still you’ll never get it right,
  cos when you’re laid in bed at night,
  watching roaches climb the wall,
  if you call your Dad he could stop it all.

• [bob d]

  From the article it’s clear he’s remodeling his house (thus the lack of toilet)… his quest for minimalism isn’t *that* extreme.

• [semiotix]

  Yeah, I don’t know. A few things here don’t track. For instance:

  “I don’t have a lot of money. I get some from Mad Men. But I don’t think I’m rich…”

  Jon Hamm (Don Draper) gets $75,000 an episode, so I’m guessing Kartheiser isn’t far behind. Even at half that, he’d have made $1,500,000 over three seasons, plus free toilets and residuals and rather good fringe benefits.

  Now, does he not CARE that he’s made a million and counting in a few years? Sure, I could buy that. But that person is more likely to say, “Oh, yeah, they pay me an insane amount of money. I’m very, very wealthy in terms of money. But I’m really more about the whole toilet-free lifestyle thing right now.” What he said just sounds disingenuous. Maybe it’s a bad quote.

  • [Anonymous]

    “Now, does he not CARE that he’s made a million and counting in a few years?”

    Making a million dollars in Hollywood isn’t really like making a million dollars anywhere else. Trying to hang onto money in show business is like trying to carry around a fistful of sand.

    I don’t think he’s claiming that he can’t afford a toilet, but I certainly wouldn’t call him “rich” just because his salary was a large dollar amount. For example, writer Andrew Nicholls made millions of dollars working in L.A. on a whole pile of shows, but is still eating canned beans today, because living and working there is ridiculously expensive. I’m sure it’s no cheaper for actors in major shows.

  • [songkran]

    @semiotix – Not sure your math checks out. After you remove the star of the show, John Hamm, it’s a big ensemble cast and I doubt they could pay each actor half of what John Hamm makes, especially since they probably signed multi-yard contracts before it was successful.

    20k / per episode * 39 episodes = 780k – 10% for an agent – 5% for a lawyer – 1.85% for SAG dues = 651k. after taxes = 423k / 3 years = 141k a year.

    That’s not a bad salary at all, but I certainly wouldn’t call it “an insane amount of money”

• [MollyMaguire]

  I wonder if owning a 5 gallon bucket, some sawdust, and a compost pile out back would be too much for him?

• [ROSSINDETROIT]

  I think he’s having us on a bit, and good for him. The world world be a better place if celebrities took interviews a lot less seriously.
  And if this guy was your neighbor, wouldn’t you let him go to the can or whatever?

• [ROSSINDETROIT]

  FTR, when we watched the Angel DVDs Connor annoyed me to the point of throwing things at the screen. Rather watch a dozen rubber suited demons who can’t move than see Angel’s emo-spawn sulk and pout through a scene. I’d give Vincent a chance in something else, though. If I ever watched TV.

• [stegodon]

  pete campbell the sink-pisser. duly noted.

• [Anonymous]

  “I am planning to get a toilet at some point. But for now I have to go to the neighbors”

  Um… that is not actually called “living”, extreme or otherwise. I belive the term you’re actually looking for is “mooching”.

• [Beanolini]

  Reminiscent of Michael Landy‘s “Break Down”, in which he catalogued and shredded all his possessions.

• [Anonymous]

  Have you ever seen this guy in any interviews? He looks like Kurt Kobain. In fact, he could probably play him on a made-for-TV-movie one day.

  Jus’ sayin, this news surprised me not one bit.