Steve Carell Quotes

I joined an improv group in college, which was a lot of fun. After I graduated, I moved to Chicago to try to get into the Second City. ~ Steve Carell

There's plenty of room for all sorts of movies and all sorts of comedies, so I never saw that as a competitive thing. I think there's room in the marketplace for everything. ~ Steve Carell

It's a very familiar type of place where people either go to their house on the lake or they get together in different places. This was a normal, relatable place that I think a lot of people have in their childhood. ~ Steve Carell

I love my wife dearly, and, therefore, I've never cooked a meal, romantic or otherwise, for her. ~ Steve Carell

For me, at least, all of my career goals, all of my focus, everything just shifted and the importance was my children, and that's where all the joy came from as well. ~ Steve Carell

Actors and magicians are both performers, and they represent things that are not necessarily who they are. ~ Steve Carell

Steve Carell is good. I like him. Who else? Here's another depressing thing: animation has kind of taken over, too. You know, 'Family Guy?' I watch that because the guy is good. ~ Joe Flaherty

I'm listening to a lot of Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, and Rihanna. A lot of pop female artists. I have to say I'm pretty well-versed in the pop female category. ~ Steve Carell

Reading a book, watching a movie, going to a play, it's transporting, and very, very exciting. And to be a part of that, creating things with your imagination, whoa. ~ Steve Carell

In my role of agent for Miss Hathaway, I would like to say that she does not answer questions relating to this subject. ~ Steve Carell

I think when someone who's known for doing drama does a comedy but just tries to be funny, that's a mistake. ~ Steve Carell

From cheesecake on a stick to meat skewers to deep-fried bananas on a stick - there are no plates anymore. In Los Angeles, everything has become a corn dog. Actually, corn dogs still work. But most other food should be stickless. ~ Steve Carell

It's harder when people are playing along, because it's just not as funny. They're trying to be funny, and it sort of cancels out the whole joke. ~ Steve Carell

I think a character in a comedy should not know they`re in a comedy. ~ Steve Carell

For my wife and I, the challenge is to not make every day the best day possible because it's not realistic. ~ Steve Carell

Whenever I'm offered something, I always read the script and meet the director. I still appreciate just being considered. ~ Steve Carell

Anything nice that's said about me is diametrically opposed to who I am. ~ Steve Carell

I'm a taker in terms of jokes. I love to hear a good joke, but I don't retain jokes. I'm not a good teller of jokes. ~ Steve Carell

I don't do anything to try to change people's perceptions of me. I tend to think that's sort of an ego driven thing. ~ Steve Carell

I always feel so pretentious talking about comedy and deconstructing it. It always feels somehow self-centred to talk about any sort of process. ~ Steve Carell

I had, like, two goals in my career: One was to try to get into 'Second City.' When I moved to Chicago, my goal was to try to work at 'Second City.' And beyond that, my goal was to make enough money as an actor to not do anything else but act, not have to go and wait tables again. ~ Steve Carell

We always spend the summer together. My wife and kids, we always go back to Massachusetts and spend the summer there near where my wife and I both grew up. I wasn't willing to sacrifice the summer to go elsewhere. ~ Steve Carell

Your brain, like your tongue, is a muscle. Practicing thinking by yourself really helps develop your brain, which you need throughout your day. I like to practice my thinking in a darkened room, alone. ~ Steve Carell

We are all facing the end one day or another. I say, live a good and prosperous life, make sure your choices count, make them count. ~ Steve Carell

Taste in comedy, like fashion, changes all the time. ~ Steve Carell

You project a version of yourself to the public to protect and insulate yourself a little bit. Actors come up with a version of themselves in order to protect the real person. ~ Steve Carell

Children are very smart, in their own stupid way. A child's brain is like a sponge, and you know how smart sponges are. ~ Steve Carell

Talking to my wife, we stare at each other, saying, 'How is this happening? Why is this happening? Why now?' It's nothing I ever aspired to. ~ Steve Carell

Do not to be as shy around girls, because they're probably just as shy and just as scared as you are. ~ Steve Carell

Joan Baxter (Lauren Graham): "You want to build a boat?"
Evan Baxter: "It might be something fun for the family. Go sailing on the lake. I don't know. [looking at his feet, under his breath] Be great in case it floods or something… ~ Steve Carell

If I'd had a great level of success early on, who knows how I would have responded. I might have been a complete jerk. ~ Steve Carell

The best food is in Chicago. There are great restaurants everywhere, from fancy places to burger joints. ~ Steve Carell

I am happily married, and I think I was lucky that success came a little later in my life. It's difficult to handle all the attention when you are a young gun. ~ Steve Carell

I don't text, I don't have a Blackberry. Literally, I just have a cell phone that I haven't programmed and the whole Bluetooth. No. I don't even have an earpiece for my cell phone. ~ Steve Carell

Toby is in HR, which technically means he works for corporate, so he's really not a part of our family. Also, he's divorced, so he's really not a part of his family. ~ Steve Carell

Relationships shouldn't be disposable. If there's something worth saving - not always the case, some relationships are irreconcilable - but if there is something that you determine is worth saving, then try to do that. ~ Steve Carell

I've always enjoyed watching characters that aren't aware that they're doing anything funny. And I think that inherently makes them funnier. ~ Steve Carell

When I first started looking at Twitter, I followed people like Steve Martin, who will just write the funniest non sequiturs now and then, which I thought was really fun. That's kind of the road I've taken. Every now and then, something comes into your mind and you put it out there. It's very innocuous. I think it's kind of fun. ~ Steve Carell

Whenever I hear someone describe something as a 'kids movie' or a 'family movie,' it immediately has a negative connotation in my mind because I think, 'Well, as an adult, I wouldn't go see it by myself, because it's purely for children and it holds nothing for me and it's simplistic and it's kind of easy.' ~ Steve Carell

My parents had a certain resolve to them that I don't see as so prevalent today. Through good times and bad, they were committed to one another. Their relationship wasn't something to be constantly examined or picked apart. ~ Steve Carell

You may look around, and see two groups here. White collar, blue collar. But I don't see it that way. You know why not? Because I am collar-blind. ~ Steve Carell

My maternal grandma was a tough, tough lady and a stern woman, who lost her husband young and raised six kids by herself. She lived in a mining community in Upstate New York and ran a boarding house for miners. She took care of an entire family and miners who lived in the house as well. ~ Steve Carell

I'm not superstitious, but I'm a little stitious. ~ Steve Carell

I'm an early bird and I'm an owl. So I'm wise and I have worms. ~ Steve Carell

I think in most relationships that have problems, there's fault on both sides. And in order for it to work, there has to be some common ground that's shared. And it's not just one person making amends. ~ Steve Carell

In the United States, there is a restaurant called The Outback Steakhouse, and I could survive in there for several weeks at least, sustaining myself on bloomin' onions and, I'm sure, their legitimate and very Australian cuisine. In the real Outback? I give myself about 14 minutes. ~ Steve Carell

You all took a life here today. The life of the party. ~ Steve Carell

I'll do whatever I can do to remain employed. I'm just not precious about doing comedy or doing drama. I never want to do something in order to prove to other people what I can do. ~ Steve Carell

In an enclosed space, a camel's breath can change the atmosphere of the room. Not only just the smell, they literally seem to change the atmospheric pressure. It's so disgusting. It's like they have eight stomachs each more rancid then the next and it just comes out of their mouth. ~ Steve Carell

I was sort of traumatized by girls in the third grade. Because there was a girl in my third grade class I had a crush on. I bought her a box of Valentine's Day chocolate. And I put it in her cubby with a note that said something like, 'I am deeply in love with you, Your Secret Admirer.' And I didn't sign my name. ~ Steve Carell

So Ryan got promoted to corporate, where he is a big fish in a little pond. Where as back here in Scranton I'm still top dog, in a fairly large pond. So who is the real boss, the dog or the fish? ~ Steve Carell

My job doesn't define my kids in any way. When we go to places, it's about them and it's about us as a family. I think they're proud of me, but I'm just Dad. ~ Steve Carell

Some people just derive great joy from making other people laugh. And I do, but I don't feel like I need to do it 24 hours a day. ~ Steve Carell

One of the skills I had to learn and become proficient in is kissing a man. I had never kissed a man. Will Smith did it in his movies, so did Jake Gyllenhaal, and I figured it was my time. So it was me and Steve Carell - fantastic. ~ Dwayne Johnson

Steve Buscemi is hilarious. He's really, really good with improv. ~ Steve Carell

Even with college, the reason I wanted to go so badly is because I wanted to major in film. I want to take screenwriting classes and learn more about behind the scenes stuff, because I love people like Steve Carell and Kristen Wiig who are able to write a lot of their own material and be so involved in everything they do. ~ Miranda Cosgrove

Whenever you see people talking about how real they are or how normal they are, it seems odd to have that self awareness that you could potentially not be normal. ~ Steve Carell

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. ~ Steve Carell

I don't even know if I have kind of a personal, like a take or a mental manual of how I'm raising kids. It's really - I think with everybody, it's just day-to-day and you just try to deal with every situation as they come. ~ Steve Carell

I wasn't a class clown, I never developed this comedic flair as a kid. Even when I decided to become an actor, it was just to be an actor, not necessarily a comedic actor. I wasn't that guy who struck out with women so he became really funny, and that's when the women started to like him. ~ Steve Carell

I'm not good with pickup lines or flirting. I don't have that kind of self-confidence or natural charisma. ~ Steve Carell

My father is Italian, and I never met my paternal grandparents. The family name was 'Caroselli' and it was changed in the mid '50s. I think they wanted to assimilate, which was pretty common, although I love the name 'Caroselli.' ~ Steve Carell

We stole the Statue of Liberty…!
[the minions cheer]
…the small one, from Las Vegas!"
[the cheers stop] - as Gru ~ Steve Carell

Nothing to me feels as good as laughing incredibly hard. ~ Steve Carell

I'm not a crazy Vegas guy. I'm not a gambler. ~ Steve Carell

Everyone said to Vincent van Gogh, "You can't be a great painter, you only have one ear." And you know what he said? "I can't hear you. ~ Steve Carell

When you approach it, and I hate sounding like the pretentious actor, but yeah, I think you have to find things within the character that are likeable, or at least human, and not to go at it with any sort of predetermined notions as to what that character is. ~ Steve Carell

Yeah, I went hunting once. Shot a deer in the leg. Had to kill it with a shovel. Took about an hour. Why do you ask? ~ Steve Carell

I tend not to be someone who's on all the time, or is always trying to make other people laugh. ~ Steve Carell

That is a perfectly good mini Christmas tree. We are going to sell that to charity because that is what Christmas is all about. ~ Steve Carell

As soon as you start to talk about your own mannerisms, you are screwed. Because if you are aware of your own mannerisms, or beyond that even what makes any one thing funny to people, I really ascribe to that that if you start deconstructing it too much, it is immediately not funny. ~ Steve Carell

I don't want to, I don't plan my career based on what I want people to believe I'm capable of doing. So I just take things that I think might be good or might be fun to do or might ultimately entertain. ~ Steve Carell

I don't want to be pretentious about, "yes, I need to move in to the more dramatic roles and express myself and prove to everyone that I'm capable of doing it," it really isn't that, I think that's a bad reason to choose roles. It's more like, who would I be working with and would they be fun to do and entertaining to watch, is it an interesting story or character. ~ Steve Carell

Being an action star is all I had ever hoped to be. I ultimately knew I would be an action star. ~ Steve Carell

STEVE CARELL IS NICE BUT IT IS SCARY

It has been said many times, but it is true: Steve Carell is a very nice guy. His niceness manifests itself mostly in the fact that he never complains. You could screw up a handful of takes outside in 104-degree smog-choked Panorama City heat, and Steve Carell's final words before collapsing of heat stroke would be a friendly and hopeful "Hey, you think you have that shot yet?"
I've always found Steve gentlemanly and private, like a Jane Austen character. The one notable thing about Steve's niceness is that he is also very smart, and that kind of niceness has always made me nervous. When smart people are nice, it's always terrifying, because I know they're taking in everything and thinking all kinds of smart and potentially judgmental things. Steve could never be as funny as he is, or as darkly observational an actor, without having an extremely acute sense of human flaws. As a result, I'm always trying to impress him, in the hope that he'll go home and tell his wife, Nancy, "Mindy was so funny and cool on set today. She just gets it."
Getting Steve to talk shit was one of the most difficult seven-year challenges, but I was determined to do it. A circle of actors could be in a fun, excoriating conversation about, say, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and you'd shoot Steve an encouraging look that said, "Hey, come over here; we've made a space for you! We're trashing Dominique Strauss-Kahn to build cast rapport!" and the best ~ Mindy Kaling

In my wildest dreams I never thought - well, I never thought I'd work. ~ 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. ~ Steve Carell

'Anchorman' ... is not grounded in anything. There is absolutely no heart to that movie, which I love. ~ Steve Carell

A healthy body means a healthy mind. You get your heart rate up, and you get the blood flowing through your body to your brain. Look at Albert Einstein. He rode a bicycle. He was also an early student of Jazzercise. You never saw Einstein lift his shirt, but he had a six-pack under there. ~ Steve Carell

I ate fiberglass insulation. It wasn't cotton candy like the guy said ... my tummy itches. ~ Steve Carell

There are ten rules of business that you need to know... You have to play to win, but you need to win to play... I'll give you the other nine after lunch. ~ Steve Carell

I find things funny that aren't self-aware. That don't know they're funny, and I think the same can hold true for drama. If you think you're in this tragedy and you play it for tragedy, there's a self-awareness there that I think takes you out of watching it and I believe it cuts both ways. ~ Steve Carell

Sending a handwritten letter is becoming such an anomaly. It's disappearing. My mom is the only one who still writes me letters. And there's something visceral about opening a letter - I see her on the page. I see her in her handwriting. ~ Steve Carell

I've tried the female thing. I was in a movie called Dinner for Schmucks a couple of years ago with Steve Carell and I created a female character for that movie. And after a few months of trying her out on the road it just didn't work. I mean, I can think like a terrorist, I can think like a white trash guy, I can even try and think like an African American, but I can't figure out how a woman. ~ Jeff Dunham

You're doing your kids a disservice if they do get everything they want because that's not the way life's going to go, and I think kids have to have some reality. ~ Steve Carell

The ability to compromise and having the ability to laugh at ourselves is huge and works well for me. ~ Steve Carell

Because I went from the 'Daily Show' where I was a fake news guy on a fake news show, to 'Bruce Almighty' where I played a news guy, to 'Anchorman' where I played a news guy, now I'm ... yeah, I tend to gravitate towards suits. ~ Steve Carell

I don't feel that I have to control every aspect of things that I appear in. You learn a lot performing someone else's writing. ~ Steve Carell

When someone is good, but it doesn't seem like their world will collapse if they don't get the part, it's more appealing. It's like dating someone: You don't want someone who's too into you. ~ Steve Carell

It's great working with Steve Carell and Jim Carrey. Those guys are really funny. ~ Steve Buscemi

I don't think something necessarily has to be mean or cynical to represent 'edgy.' I think 'edgy' can mean a lot of different things. ~ Steve Carell

I play the baritone horn - which is like a mini tuba, and is the least sexy instrument you can choose, and I generally say I don't play one so I don't have to acknowledge it. I also play fife. ~ Steve Carell

They love 3-D. It's fun to watch a movie in 3-D with your children or with a group of children because you see the kids in front of you from time to time reaching up. You see little hands reaching up to grab things that they think are right there. I think it's remarkable and it does obviously, literally, add another dimension to the movie. ~ Steve Carell

I am always the type of person who is waiting for the other shoe to drop and for it to peter out and end. And if it does that's fine. ~ Steve Carell

I always wanted to do a comedy, but I wanted to pick the right one. But it came down to working with Steve Carell. I've wanted to work with him since I met him years ago as a kid. ~ Ryan Gosling

Maybe the coolest people are the ones who don't care about being cool. ~ Steve Carell

I hate hospitals, in my mind they are associated with sickness. ~ Steve Carell

For the better part of my adult life, I proudly avoided nerd/nimrod/goober status. I was always just cool enough. ~ Steve Carell

Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject. So you know you are getting the best possible information. ~ Steve Carell

Everyone is flawed and everyone makes mistakes and is culpable. ~ Steve Carell