LOS ANGELES—Adrian Grenier, Kevin Connolly, Jerry Ferrara, and Kevin Dillon may always be best known, respec­tively, as Vince, E, Turtle, and Drama. It’s the downside of working on a television show for a long time; eventually, audiences begin to see you as your character. The effect kicked in around year two for the boys of HBO’s Entourage.

Having been on the show for eight seasons, ending in 2011, these men are indistinguishable in the public mind from the roles they play. And yes, after eight seasons, Vince and company are hitting the big screen in the full-length Entourage movie, opening next Wednesday (June 3). With all four actors holding court in a Los Angeles hotel room, it’s not hard to see some similarities between life and art, but it’s much more interesting to observe the differences.

Take Dillon. If any of the actors on this panel were to match up with their fictional counterpart, the smart money would be on him. He plays Johnny “Drama” Chase, the actor brother of much more successful Vince, and the parallels to Dillon’s actual life—older brother Matt being a onetime A-list movie star—are hard to avoid.

In reality, though, Dillon is soft-spoken, thoughtful, and not at all consumed by the Hollywood rat race, a force of nature that Johnny Drama obsesses over.

“I’ve had a lot of actors come up to me who are like, ‘You know, you’re carrying the torch for actors,’ because [he] stands up to these producers who are texting in the middle of an audition,” says Dillon, who, according to the other members of the panel, doesn’t own a cellphone. “They’re like, ‘I’ve had that happen to me, and you stood up to him!’”

Dillon has always been one of the strongest comedic contributors to the show. His Johnny has a number of intricacies, including a catch phrase (“Victory!” from his role on the fictional TV program Viking Quest) and his frequent, terrible auditions. “Johnny Drama auditions are a must-watch,” Ferrara says. “It’s event-watching. I always get excited for them because I can’t wait to see what Kevin’s gonna do with it. And he never lets down.”

Asked if he can remember any particularly bad auditions from his life, Dillon doesn’t hesitate. “I have been through many bad auditions. I did one with Rhea Perlman,” he recalls. “It was so bad. I smoked cigarettes back then, and it was, like, five flights down, so I ran to smoke a cigarette and they were like, ‘Hey! They’re calling you!’ So I ran to the top of the stairs. I went in there, I was huffing and puffing, I was sweating—it just looked like I was a nervous wreck. It was awful.”

Still, if Dillon never works on another project, he will have sealed his legacy as one of the most memorable characters ever to grace the screen. “If Johnny Drama had an IMDb page, it would be pretty impressive,” Connolly says. “The guy has done a shitload of work. Let’s face it—he’s worked more than I have, that’s for sure.”

Creator and director Doug Ellin chips in with an anecdote. “We’d be shooting and a high-school bus would drive by and see Dillon and just start shouting ‘Victory!’”