FRESH AIR: While his Office character always took himself seriously, actor Rainn Wilson seems to be all about the laughs. For the entirety of the series, Wilson has played beet-farming, archery-loving middle-management kook Dwight Schrute on the NBC hit television series. While working on The Office, Wilson explored film opportunities as well. In the 2008 film The Rocker, Wilson played a failed hair-metal musician. After he’s kicked out of his band, the group goes on to achieve great success. But when he joins his nephew’s garage band, he gets a second chance at fame. Wilson made his breakthrough as an actor playing an eccentric mortician on the HBO series Six Feet Under. He has also appeared in the films Almost Famous, Galaxy Quest and Juno. MORE
ROLL CALL: Hollywood actor Rainn Wilson, best known for bringing life to the aggravating geekery of Dwight Schrute in the NBC sitcom “The Office,” is using his celebvocat status to advocate for the release of seven religious leaders currently imprisoned in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Wilson was raised Baha’i by his parents, who converted in the 1960s, he told HOH. The Baha’is of the United States, an official organization, says that the Iranian government has wrongly imprisoned seven Baha’i leaders and given them unreasonably harsh 20-year sentences. “They’re not out to convert people,” Wilson said in an interview before an event at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Monday. “They’re just out to have their faith.” The Baha’i faith began in the mimd-1800s in Iran. A statistics sheet produced by the Baha’i Library Online, an unofficial religious resource, shows that the faith had spread to 190 countries as of 2001. Wilson isn’t trying to be a spokesman for the Baha’i faith, he said, but to use his fame to draw attention to the plight of its practitioners. MORE
PEREZ HILTON: All was fine when the Office actor was on his way to Scranton, Pennsylvania on Friday for the HIGHlarious show’s wrap party… That is, until he and six others of the show’s cast, including John Krasinski missed their connecting flight in Philly because it took off ten minutes early! Rainn, rightfully annoyed, took to Twitter to voice his opinions about the missed US Airways flight:
