‘Earl’s’ slacker bro is all about family

ETHAN SUPLEE has been keeping busy playing the slacker brother of Jason Lee’s slacker lead character on the hit NBC sitcom “My Name Is Earl” -- and portraying an aspiring filmmaker in the new movie “Art School Confidential.”

After shooting five days a week, Suplee’s weekends are devoted primarily to his wife, Brandy, and three children: 8- and 9-year-old stepdaughters, and a 10-month-old baby girl.

“Thursday or Friday I get an e-mail from my wife with basically a weekend call sheet. It’s very much the weekends are time for the kids,” he says.

Dinner on the set

Friday night is almost always spent at work, and often that’ll be the day the kids come and have dinner with me on set. Brandy will pick them up from school, they’ll come down and have dinner, and then go home and watch videos.

Or the luckiest thing would be if Jason and I ordered sushi. They always get it from the same place [Katsu-Ya in Encino]. It’s amazing. Oftentimes I feel bad because it’s just Jason and I who get the sushi, so I try to hide it.

Art and activity

Saturday is usually when my weekend starts. The kids have art class from 9 until 10:30, and then we eat at Moe’s in Toluca Lake. The kids love the granola and the eggs benedict, and I usually get an omelet with a veggie burger cut up inside of it. The baby loves the oatmeal.

After Moe’s, it’s doing art projects at home or hikes. We lived up in the hills in Burbank, and our entire backyard was this vacant mountain, so we’d go on hikes in that area. But we’re moving to Studio City, and we have an acre there, so we’ll have a huge backyard there too, which will be just as much fun.

I love to cook. I like to make homemade pasta, and we have a little pasta machine to churn it out and make it into fettuccine, linguini or angel hair once we’ve actually made the dough.

Biking on the beach

Sunday is almost always spent in Venice. We get up early, go down there and rent bikes. We get the bike with the baby carriage, and the baby rides in the carriage. We ride up and down the boardwalk, and the girls will get their hands painted with henna. Bella, the older one, collects rocks.

I think Venice is the most culturally diversified part of Los Angeles. It’s just such a mixture of people, and the kids get a kick out of it because, along with the artistic element, there’s an element of adventure and there’s always different music. They get tripped out by the people going up and down [the boardwalk], and the people working out at Muscle Beach. It’s amazing for them. It’s like they get thrust into this carnival every weekend.

Sunday night I TiVo “The Sopranos.” I’m almost never able to watch it, ‘cause I have to be up at 5 the next morning. The kids always scramble, ‘cause they have weekend homework that gets put off until Sunday afternoon. And I’ll look at whatever work I have to do the next day, before I pass out.

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-- Steve Baltin