Dan In Real Life - Steve Carell interview
Compiled by Jack Foley
STEVE Carell talks about playing a single father in Dan In Real Life, getting to kiss sexy French co-star Juliette Binoche and that waxing scene in The 40-Year-Old Virgin…
Q. So what was it like, getting to kiss Juliette Binoche?
Steve Carell: Everything I could have hoped for! Actually, she’s just one of the nicest, most emotionally in-tune human beings I’ve ever met and just warm and intelligent and funny too. When they were casting for the film, I think one of the things I suggested for the character of Marie was: “Find an actress with a really good heart…” And they did with Juliette. But more than that, she’s humble too. She was just a joy to be around. People keep asking me: “Did you ever think you’d get to work with Juliette Binoche?” And hand on heart, I can honestly say, not in a million years.
Q: The rest of the cast isn’t too bad either…
Steve Carell: No, they’re not. John Mahoney, Dianne Wiest, Dane Cook and Emily Blunt to name a few – just to be working with people of that calibre made me just stand back looking at them and go “wow”! They’ve always been actors that I’ve really admired and it was hard to be in the same room and not be intimidated by them when I found myself acting alongside them.
Q: What made you want to take on the role of Dan?
Steve Carell: Well, on a personal level, I would never want to take on a character who didn’t have some redeemable qualities. Even the worst of people, such as Michael Scott in The Office [Carell’s character in the US version of the Ricky Gervais sitcom], have some decent human qualities that you can latch onto.
But in Dan Burns’s case, he’s a very ordinary guy – a widowed father with three young daughters who has a job as a parenting advice columnist and who tries to raise his daughters while coping with his own very real sadness. He is too scared and too wary of doing anything unpredictable or outside the box, until he meets and falls for Marie [Binoche], at which point all chaos ensues. As luck would have it, she’s the girlfriend of his brother, Mitch [Cook] and of course, he doesn’t want to hurt his brother. I liked Dan because he’s just a normal guy, struggling along as best he can but never allowing himself to wallow in self-pity.
Q: Did Dan’s relationship with his kids make you think of your relationship with your own children?
Steve Carell: Well, I have a six-year-old daughter and a three-year-old son, so being around a nine-, 15- and 17-year-old in the film felt like my life accelerated by a few years and it was pretty scary, I can tell you. As a parent, all you want is for your kids to be safe but you don’t want to be over-protective and so you know that at some stage, they’re going to make their own mistakes and get hurt emotionally when all you want to do is protect them from that. My character Dan is going through a lot of hurt and all he wants is for his own kids to never experience that, which of course is an impossible thing to accomplish.
Q: And what do you want for your own children?
Steve Carell: To never have to hear them say: “Dad, you’re such a jerk.”
Q: Is that ever a possibility?
Steve Carell: Well, it might have been if I’d had success earlier in life, but having success that much later meant I was far more grounded when it came. The last few years of my life have just been surreal and after a lifetime of disappointment and heartache and rejection, I still don’t believe this is all actually happening. I’m extremely grateful for my success – I just never expect it to last and my motto, if I have one, is just put your head down and do the job.
Q: Did you adopt that same motto when filming some of the animal scenes in Evan Almighty?
Steve Carell: Well, let’s just say it became harder to adhere to sometimes. One time, one of the baboons knocked over a glass of lemonade and so I kind of ad libbed with a slightly aggressive tone and a: “Hey man, what are you doing?”. Anyway, this baboon adopted the attack stance and bared his teeth and scared the hell out of me and after the take, the handler came up to me and said: “You know what? You really shouldn’t do that? And you shouldn’t look them in the eye either.” I was thinking to myself, well I could have used that information before we’d started shooting!
Q: Still, at least you didn’t have to get your chest waxed that time, like you did for The 40-Year-old Virgin…
Steve Carell: True. But I’m off for a wax as soon as this interview is over.
Q: Did you enjoy filming that scene?
Steve Carell: Oh, tremendously! Actually, when it came to doing the scene, I said it had to be 100 per cent real for it to be funny. How stupid can you get? The person who was hired to do it was an actress/waxer and just before we shot the scene, all the women on set who knew it was going to hurt like crazy were saying to me: “Are you sure you don’t want to just trim your hair down a little bit?” and I was brazenly going: “No, no, I’ll be fine”. Of course, halfway through the shoot, the method acting thing was starting to look like a really bad idea.
Q: At least there was nothing that painful to undergo in Dan In Real Life.
Steve Carell: No, just callisthenics on the lawn, which was easy in comparison. I’m one of four brothers who grew up in Massachusetts and my wife [actress, Nancy Walls] has six brothers and sisters, so that large family dynamic is pretty familiar to me. I seem to remember doing lots of things as a family on the beach but because I was the youngest, I kind of got left to my own devices, which is always pretty cool.
b>Read our review of Dan In Real Life
b>Read our interview with Juliette Binoche