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Scene Stealers

This Hollywood House Sitter Makes His Own Rules

Brian Farrell as a poker dealer in a film with Jake Johnson. When he’s not acting, Mr. Farrell house-sits for Mr. Johnson and other friends in Hollywood.Credit...Peter Hoffman for The New York Times

LOS ANGELES — Brian Farrell rarely sleeps at the ramshackle apartment he rents on an uninviting stretch of Sunset Boulevard. Look for him instead in the Hollywood Hills, where residents pay him to slumber in their guest rooms, swim in their pools and rummage through their refrigerators.

“Has he ever looked through my sock drawer? Probably,” said Jake Johnson, the “New Girl” and “Jurassic World” actor, with a laugh. “We kind of all assume that Brian knows some secrets. But he’s also become a master at what he does.”

You could call Mr. Farrell a professional house sitter.

It just kind of happened — an improvised side career that reveals the unspoken hierarchies between friends who make it in Hollywood and friends who do not. Mr. Farrell was pursuing acting, running with a crowd of similar-minded people, and some of them started to land sitcoms, sell screenplays and get producing gigs. But Mr. Farrell, 38, was still auditioning, working odd jobs and hoping his day would come.

“I started to get calls,” said Mr. Farrell, who sports a curlicue mustache and a man bun. “ ‘Hey, dude, if we let you stay in our house while we’re away making our movie, will you take care of our dogs?’ They figured I was probably available.”

That was about five years ago. Mr. Farrell, whose experiences helped inform “Digging for Fire,” a new film starring and co-written by Mr. Johnson that has a house-sitting theme, now spends up to three weeks a month house-sitting, mostly for people in show business. Over the years, there have been incidents (a pushy pet python comes to mind) and escapades, like when a homeowner returned without warning to find him sitting in a lawn chair on her roof.

“I’d had a couple bottles of her wine, and I was playing the guitar and singing songs to the moon,” Mr. Farrell said. “To be fair, she did insist that I make myself at home.”

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Mr. Johnson in the film "Digging for Fire," which was informed by Mr. Farrell's experiences.Credit...The Orchard

As movie production has left Los Angeles for cheaper spots like Louisiana, Georgia and Canada, people like Mr. Farrell have become, at least in certain circles, just another service provider: the gardener, the pool guy, the cleaning lady, the house sitter. House Sitters America, a nine-year-old service, says that Los Angeles is its top market in the summer, high season for both vacations and film shoots.

Except that Mr. Farrell does not typically consider himself an employee. In most instances, he sees himself as a friend lending a hand. His “friend” house-sitting charge is only $25 a day, plus meals. “I have a written list of rules that we agree on beforehand,” he said. “One is that I get to eat all your food and drink all your booze.”

It usually works out great. But Mr. Farrell has also discovered what Hollywood’s housekeepers and gardeners have long known: There is often the thinnest of lines — and, at the same time, the widest of gaps — between haves and have-nots. Mr. Farrell’s friends trust him to be alone in their homes. But is he an equal?

Rather than being thankful for his willingness to step in, often at the last minute and for a very small fee, some people find a way to communicate that reverse-gratitude is in order: You, struggling actor, should feel lucky to sit on our expensive furniture.

“That hurts,” he said. “I’m a person, too.”

The beer-bellied Mr. Farrell, who graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz, comes across as one of the last people you would trust with the keys to your house. Over lunch at the 101 Coffee Shop last month, he shared house-sitting anecdotes that sounded like sequels to “The Hangover.”

There was the time he smoked a lot of marijuana and accidentally “sort of blew up” a Cuisinart coffee maker. Once, he stripped down to his underwear and washed his car in a homeowner’s driveway, creating huge soap bubbles. “I was wearing boxers,” he said, taking a bite of a Tabasco-drenched B.L.T. “It wasn’t too pervy.”

Still, Mr. Farrell insisted that some of the more off-color house-sitting antics on display in “Digging for Fire” — swimming naked in a pool, snorting lines of cocaine — are fabrications. “I’m not a complete animal,” he said. “Digging for Fire,” directed and co-written by Joe Swanberg, arrives in art houses on Aug. 21.

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Mr. Farrell.Credit...Peter Hoffman for The New York Times

What Mr. Farrell lacks in maturity he seems to make up for in discretion. “I’m never, ever going to TMZ anyone’s house,” he said, referring to the tabloid news site.

He also has a way with animals. Dave Lifshin, a television producer (“Rizzoli & Isles,” “Super Fun Night”) with a frequent need for a house sitter, said his skittish Siamese cat, Kaya, has developed a bizarre bond with Mr. Farrell.

“She really opens up to Brian,” Mr. Lifshin said. “Our dog also loves him. We don’t let our dog sleep with us, but I have a feeling Brian has different rules.”

Mr. Farrell, who grew up in Illinois, still hopes to become a star in his own right. Mr. Swanberg recently cast him as a poker dealer in a film called “Win It All,” which again stars Mr. Johnson and has been shooting in Chicago.

In the meantime, Mr. Farrell wants to publish a book based on his signature house-sitting move: He leaves behind a typed report. Using a Smith Corona typewriter he hauls around in his car, Mr. Farrell composes a play-by-play of what went on during his stay. If nothing else, he is brutally honest.

“I really enjoyed perusing the Polaroids in your office,” he wrote in a July 2012 report to Mr. Lifshin.

Other details from various notes:

“If your computer is malfunctioning, it is probably my fault.”

“I fried up the last few pieces of your bacon, which was delicious.”

“I blame the reefer.”

Brooks Barnes is a reporter in the Los Angeles bureau of The New York Times.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section ST, Page 2 of the New York edition with the headline: This House Sitter Isn’t Starstruck . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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