7 Things You Didn't Know About Michael Ealy

Handsome? Check. Affable? Check. Dreamy eyes? Check. What’s not to love about Common Law star Michael Ealy? Well, beside him giving us one more reason to watch a cop drama (Ealy plays police officer Travis Marks on USA’s Common Law), Ealy is also one of the friendliest, yet fiercely private, guys around. So during an office visit to ESSENCE, we asked him to give us a few more details into his private life.Here are seven things you didn’t know about him. Ladies, we hope you’re taking notes:

1. His guilty pleasure is watching Ice Loves Coco
“I don’t know why,” he says. “It might be because they have a bulldog named Spartacus, and that’s just genius.”

2. He’s an excellent painter… just not the kind you think
Have a room you need painted? Michael Ealy’s your guy. “I’m actually very good with Home Depot-handy type of paintwork,” he says.

3. He’s a self-described ping pong “Zen Master”
The Maryland native loves ping pong so much he has a personal paddle named “Ram Jam.”

4. His wallet reads “Bad Mutha F***a”
Yup, just like Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction.

5. If he wasn’t Michael Ealy, the actor, he would be…
“An educator,” says Ealy, who got his undergrad degree in English with dreams of becoming a college professor, “like Cornel West.”

6. He’s currently reading…
The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle. “And no, I’m not planning to read 50 Shades of Grey,” he jokes.

7. He almost quit acting to get a “regular job.”
Ealy spent five years working as a waiter in New York City before getting his big break in Barbershop in 2001. “There were times where I’d feel like, ‘I’m a waiter. I’m not an actor. I’m a waiter,” he says of the nights he’d go home with a litle over $30 in his pocket. Aren’t you glad he got his big break?