Jake, 25—6'1", all 236 pounds of him, complete with 18-inch neck, 20-inch biceps, 33-inch waist and 27-inch thighs—is a former competitive body builder who has become an athletic taskmaster to the stars. His clients include Steven Spielberg, Terri Garr, Margot Kidder, Harrison Ford and wife Melissa Mathison, Keith Carradine and Valerie Perrine. One reason for his success is that he makes house calls, at $60 per half hour. He also seems to get results, even if it means pushing patrons beyond the point when they'd like to stop for an iced tea and maybe just a peek at As the World Turns. "Training with Jake on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays makes me fully appreciate Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays," says Mathison, who wrote E.T. "Making an appointment with Jake is similar to making an appointment with the dentist," says Ryan's Four producer Roger Birnbaum, another client. "Except the dentist uses Novocain."
Steinfeld thinks his toughness is part of the attraction. "Everybody else's workouts are too easy except mine," he says. He insists on speedy repetitions and incorporates available paraphernalia—a towel for a tug-of-war, buckets of oranges for arm curls—in his routines. "These people are used to intensity. I just give them what they're used to." Another reason is that Jake, an aspiring actor-comedian who has had bit parts on TV's House Calls and Simon & Simon, tries to make it fun. "We have a great time while getting in shape," he says. "I bring out the high school in everybody." He can also bring out a touch of competitiveness. "I'll say to Spiels [Spielberg], 'Harrison went for X number of minutes the last workout. How long can you last?' "
Steinfeld has been building his own body for seven years. The son of two Brooklyn advertising executives, he gave up team sports in high school in search of "individual recognition" and turned to body building. After graduation he migrated to pectoral Mecca—Santa Monica, Calif., where untold numbers of 98-pound weaklings lie buried in the sand—and began training to one day become Mr. America. He quit, he says, when he realized that "I didn't want to use steroids, sit on the beach, and work as a bouncer in bars all my life." He took a job in a Studio City health club, then landed another portraying the Incredible Hulk for Universal Studio Tours.
His celebrity sweat program began in 1980 when a friend, actress Sandy Will, who is Keith Carradine's wife, asked him to help her get in shape for a television commercial. "People came up to her at parties and wanted to know what she had done to herself," says Steinfeld, who soon had a full roster of clients. He says that the mushrooming ranks of personal exercise coaches—led by Richard Harris' ex-wife, Ann Turkel, who makes house calls with a gym-equipped 17-foot trailer—haven't hurt his business. "I have all I can handle," says Steinfeld. "I have a waiting list."
They'll have an especially long wait when he takes off this month for England to act as exercise coach for the cast and crew of the Raiders of the Lost Ark sequel, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, in which he'll also have a minor part. He played the Amazing Wamba, a bumbling hulk in Cheech and Chong's Next Movie, and will play himself in Peter Bogdanovich's upcoming Twelve's a Crowd. All that should bump up his already six-figure salary, and has him thinking about a Rolls Corniche to replace his Mercedes and a house to replace his Studio City apartment. The missing element seems to be The Girl.
"I meet girls all the time, but they just don't understand my schedule," he complains. "Sometimes I don't get home until midnight, then I get up at 4 a.m. and go to the gym. The rest of my life is for work."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
