Stars, they’re just like us — even when it comes to late-night drunk e-mailing.
For years, British actor Nick Frost — best known stateside as the portly sidekick to Simon Pegg in films like “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz” — secretly dreamed of starring in a big, splashy dance movie. But it wasn’t until having a few drinks one night a couple of winters ago that he gathered the courage to sit in front of his computer and send off a pitch to producer Nira Park.
When Frost woke up stone-cold sober the next morning, Park was ready to make it happen.
“I’d kind of been caught,” Frost tells The Post. “[But] I think I wanted to be caught.”
The resulting dance-tacular, “Cuban Fury,” hits theaters this Friday. Frost, 42, stars as Bruce, a schlubby office guy who decides to take up salsa in an attempt to win his sexy boss (Rashida Jones) away from his douchey co-worker (Chris O’Dowd).
The romantic comedy is a change of direction for Frost, who lives in London with his wife and young son, but he isn’t concerned audiences will reject this change of pace.
“It didn’t feel any different than any other thing I’d done,” he says. “If you were to think about what you imagine people would think about you [as] a romantic lead, you’ll go bonkers. There were so many other things to worry about, dancing being one of them.”
That’s a bit of an understatement — Frost came to the project with no dance experience. As a result, he trained with some of the world’s top salsa experts for seven hours a day for seven months. Thanks to that, he says, about 98 percent of the dancing his character does in the film is really Frost.
Unfortunately, as he’s now moved on to other projects, that training hasn’t exactly stuck with him.
“I think some of the specifics of vast complicated moves have left me,” Frost says. “But what I’ve been left with is a burning heart of Latin fire that can never be extinguished.”