He plays uptight Park Avenue resident Pete Campbell on 'Mad Men,' but actor Vincent Kartheiser is decidedly less materialistic than his alter ego.
In an interview with the UK Observer, Kartheiser, who resides in LA, says he no longer has a car (he takes the bus or walks) and lives in a home with no toilet.
He claims to use his neighbor's.
"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 neighbours. 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."
But he admits he does own a bed.
Fortunately, with Season 4 of 'Mad Men' about to film (it starts airing in July), he will have somewhere to use a toilet for the next several months.