The cover of "Comedy Nerd," a visual memoir by filmmaker Judd Apatow.
Director Judd Apatow and actor Pete Davidson on the set of "The King of Staten Island" on July 29, 2019 in Yonkers.

Judd Apatow doesn’t clutter up his confession: He’s been a hoarder since childhood.

“It feels like the reason why people hoard is it makes you immortal,” the 57-year-old filmmaker with multiple storage units says. “You can't die if you have a stack of magazines you haven't read yet lying around. So you just get as much stuff as possible, and you just have this very strong feeling that the Lord will not take you away until you use all of it or read all of it.”

Apatow, whose produced myriad hits including "Anchorman" and "Bridesmaids," started collecting things at a young age. In elementary school, he wrote celebrities and received autographed headshots from Carol Burnett, Bob Hope, Andy Kaufman and Al Pacino. Apatow stockpiled photographs, scripts and press clips to document his career as a producer, screenwriter, director and stand-up.

Apatow mined his archive to create his visual memoir “Comedy Nerd: A Lifelong Obsession in Stories and Pictures,” available now.

“The book is not short,” Apatow remarks of the 576-page tome. “At some point I just thought, ‘What is wrong with me? This is too much stuff. I was too busy.’ There's something almost manic about it.

“I love comedy so much, and the best part has been to meet all these people and to collaborate with them and have these experiences,” the director of sidesplitters like “Knocked Up,” “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Trainwreck” continues. “I remember Robert Altman, the director, said, ‘Making movies is like making castles in the sand, and so you should enjoy the experience with the people because everything else fades away.’ And that really does turn out to be true.”

Apatow recalls bussing tables at Long Island’s East Side Comedy Club just for glimpses of stand-ups, rooming with Adam Sandler in a $900-a-month North Hollywood apartment, and briefly apologizes to “Anchorman” star Christina Applegate for a scene with a trio of 10-foot bears. “I don’t have space to explain it,” Apatow writes, “but Christina, once again, we are so so sorry!” In our interview, he doesn’t offer much more: “Let's just say, bear training is important. And when you use bears, double check and make sure you feel comfortable with your bears.”

Apatow writes more freely about instantly falling for his wife, actress and muse Leslie Mann, and his experience with the plant-based psychedelic ayahuasca.

Judd Apatow fell for wife Leslie Mann at their first meeting: It ‘hit me like lightning’

When Mann, now 53, auditioned for the dark comedy “The Cable Guy” (1996), Apatow was immediately smitten. “I can’t believe the future Mrs. Apatow just walked in the room,” he said to the film’s director Ben Stiller.

“She was so hilarious and beautiful,” Apatow tells USA TODAY. “I just loved her vibe the moment she walked in the room. It did hit me like lightning. ‘Oh, it's her.’”

The two exchanged vows in 1997 in Hawaii and have collaborated on films like “This Is 40” and “Funny People.”

“She taught me so much about writing for women,” Apatow says. “I would see all the scripts that she would get and what good writing looked like and most of the time what bad writing looked like. It made me realize that I had to put in a lot more work to write complex characters for men and women.

“When we work together, the second I have an idea, we start kicking it around,” Apatow adds. “She comes up with an enormous amount of funny situations and lines in those movies. She's my toughest critic. When the cuts start coming in, there's always a final Leslie pass, where she protects all the actors to make sure I make them look good.”

Judd Apatow’s realization after ‘crazy’ ayahuasca journey

Apatow reveals in his new book that he tried ayahuasca in 2024 in an attempt to overcome his fear of the drug that Chelsea Handler, Lindsay Lohan and Jada Pinkett Smith have said they also imbibed.“I did it because I was so scared to do it,” Apatow says. “I don't recommend that anyone else does it because it's so crazy.”

At the end of a long journey, he had a vision of Jesus on the cross, “which was weird because I'm Jewish,” Apatow says. “I suddenly thought, ‘Oh, I completely get what this means.’ Not that I didn't before, but I felt it. And it was, we're all supposed to take care of each other.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Judd Apatow saw Jesus while on a ‘crazy’ ayahuasca journey and had this revelation

Reporting by Erin Jensen, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect