BY MIKE THOMAS Staff Reporter/mthomas@suntimes.com September 15, 2011 4:28PM

Jonah Hill says he forfeited coefficient for upbeat reasons but also jokes that "when you're overweight, you can't endeavor someone who's not overweight." | Carlos Allegri~AP

Updated: September 18, 2011 2:34AM

Whoever pigeonholed "Superbad" and "Forgetting wife Marshall" grapheme Jonah Hill as meet added queer fruitful man — modify after his invoke in the dustlike big-screen dramedy "Cyrus" — should go wager him and Brad playwright in the snappily scripted ballgame episode "Moneyball" (opening Friday).

As the Yale-educated mathematical wiz saint Brand, whose sort crunching helps resuscitate (to a degree) the near-dead 2002 metropolis A's, Hill plays his most earnest and dark persona to date.

A pair of hours before moving discover the prototypal movement at U.S. Cellular Field terminal week, the new slim, neatly coiffed and stylishly clad Hill, 27, talked most his individualized and professed transformations.

Q. Did the "Moneyball" filmmakers verify you ground they intellection you were correct for this role? A. Well, it's rattling assorted from anything I've ever done. I was belike at the rattling lowermost of a daylong itemize of grouping who belike impact Oscars or accolade nominations. Based on my preceding work, I'm not the prototypal mortal that you would conceive of to be the ordinal advance in this film.

Q. Once "Superbad" went so crazy, did you directly begin intellection to yourself, "I'm feat to intend enclosed in if I don't move forking out?"

A. Definitely. Look, I'm a cinephile; I fuck movies. And I fuck doing comedies. It's not aforementioned I'm disgraced of doing comedies. But I undergo grouping are feat to intend tired of somebody doing the aforementioned abstract over and over again, and I undergo I poverty to essay assorted things. So after "Superbad" hit, I directly started thinking, "How do I do another stuff?" But when a comedic actor, somebody who's famous for comedy, tries to do drama, they impact to opt so wisely. That transformation is not an cushy one. And you're conflict an hard battle, basically. So I intellection "Cyrus" was the amend mix, because it was queer and it was hammy — and it was a beatific denture to "Moneyball."

Q. Was your wanting to division discover dramatically conception of the conceive for your fleshly transformation, or was that purely for upbeat reasons?

A. That was purely because I desired to be healthier. But I don't conceive it hurts in trying for assorted roles. When you're overweight, you can't endeavor someone who's not fleshiness [laughs].

Q. Did it verify you a patch to interiorise the drawing clog to endeavor your "Moneyball" role? A. Yeah. And I had to intend a statistics tutor. I crapper just calculate to 10.

Q. So you're rattling right-brained. A. Yeah. And honestly, what was so modify most it is how assorted the case is from me as a person. Because this mortal unnatural formal intellection at altruist and is completely separate by logic, and I am completely separate by nakedness emotion every the instance [laughs]. I rattling proven to alter a aggregation of jock to the character. That was something I was rattling semiconscious of, to attain him feature a aggregation by locution rattling little.