From 'Wonderstone' to 'Anchorman,' Carell will have a busy 2013

TOLUCA LAKE, Calif. – Looking trim in a black windbreaker over a gray crew neck sweatshirt, Steve Carell walked into the diner near the Warner Bros. lot just like a regular guy.

OK, most actors/celebrities walk into diners like regular folk; it's not like they're transported in on pillows. So with Carell, let's emphasize the regularness.

There was something extra unassuming about his appearance, the way he carried himself. When Samuel L. Jackson, in his trademark beret, took a seat at a booth kitty-corner from Carell minutes later, he captured attention, even if no one aside from the wait staff approached him — but a man did ask Carell to pose for a photo with his daughter, which the 50-year-old actor did, graciously.

Carell, whose breakthrough movie, "The 40 Year Old Virgin" (2005), sprang from a sketch he developed while at the Second City in Chicago, draws you in subtly, his hazel eyes projecting earnestness, his short-cropped pepper-with-salt hair augmenting the image of someone who would seem right at home in a bureaucratic office — a trick that, come to think of it, he has pulled off. He's stealth-normal.

When you watch him on screen, you never know whether things will remain calm, as they do in his dramatic roles in "Hope Springs" (where he plays counselor to Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones' passion-seeking married couple) and in "Little Miss Sunshine" (his suicidal, gay Proust expert anchoring some dysfunctional family comedy), or go kablooey, as they do when he's a newscaster suddenly spouting gibberish ("Bruce Almighty," from 2003) or an office manager who can't help doing or saying the absolute wrong thing at the worst time (NBC's "The Office," which he left in 2011).

His new comedy, "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone," which opens Friday, finds Carell exercising his funny bones as an obnoxious star magician whose act has grown stale amid the shock antics of an up-and-coming rival played by Jim Carrey (his nemesis in "Bruce Almighty"). But other sides of Carell will be on display soon, given that he has five movies coming out in 2013.

"The Way, Way Back," directed by "The Descendants" co-writers Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, is a coming-of-age tale about a 14-year-old boy whose mom's new jerky boyfriend is played by Carell. That's scheduled to open in early July, as is "Despicable Me 2," the animated sequel in which Carell reprises his character of Gru, a not-so-evil villain who adopts three girls.

Late this year will come his heaviest role yet — as a mentally ill multimillionaire, John du Pont, who kills an Olympic wrestler — in "Foxcatcher," from "Moneyball" and "Capote" director Bennett Miller. At the other end of the spectrum is Second City veteran and writer/director Adam McKay's "Anchorman: The Legend Continues" (due Dec. 20), in which Carell returns as dunderheaded meteorologist Brick Tamland.

Although he had just a supporting part in the original "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" (2004), Carell said he gets asked more about that movie than any of his other roles. He discussed his eagerness to do the sequel, why he won't be in "The Office" finale and much more.

On "Anchorman: The Legend Continues": "It's going to be so ridiculous. Just before I came over, I got a link for some music that we're going to be pre-recording down there. It's already beyond absurd, what we're doing. I'm excited. You know, the first one was so much fun to do. I think that's why everyone's doing this one. I don't think anyone had any thoughts of making art. Just rampant silliness. We were just trying to make each other laugh. I don't think I've ever laughed harder in my life than when doing that."

On unlikely "Anchorman" fans: "When I did 'Hope Springs,' I was talking about [the upcoming 'Anchorman'] and Meryl Streep said, 'Oh, I'd love to be in that.' Meryl Streep throwing her hat in — it's hilarious."

On how he built up his "Anchorman" role: "First 'Anchorman' [movie] I don't even know if I had any lines to begin with — one or two in the whole script. I remember Adam would tell me to just say something, and it didn't even matter: If you find a moment where no one else is saying anything, say something, so that was kind of part of how Brick was created. It was just saying random things that did not connect to anything else."

On whether he's more comfortable sticking with a script or improvising on set: "I don't think it really matters. For something like 'Hope Springs,' there was no improvisation at all. I tried to make it letter-perfect. It's just whatever it calls for. That just did not call for improvisation. I wasn't going to start riffing with Meryl and Tommy Lee [laughs]."

On whether he improvised on "Burt Wonderstone": "Yeah, there was improvising on that. It's such a big, silly premise that it's not something that you necessarily have to stick to a very specific story line or narrative. You can kind of find jokes and bits within it all. So, yeah, that's what we tried to do, keep it sort of loose."

On why he wanted to play a long-haired, bare-chested magician: "It just seemed silly and ridiculous, and it's a world that I'd never seen in a movie before. I thought it would be fun to split the difference between very broad comedy but positioned within an actual story. … I just thought it was funny. I just thought the character was funny. He was [lowers voice to a whisper] kind of a [jerk], which I don't generally get to play. I tend to get offered parts of more likable people."

On how Wonderstone is different from his Michael Scott character on "The Office": "You know what? I never thought of Michael Scott as a jerk. He lacked a filter, but he had an enormous heart, I think. And he was intrinsically a very good person. And very sweet at his core. He just said and did incredibly offensive things in spite of himself. But somebody like Burt Wonderstone is just a jerk."

On the tight production schedule for the "Anchorman" sequel: "That amazes me. We already have a release date, and we haven't even shot a frame [laughs]. And I get more questions about 'Anchorman' than anything. Especially the international press — Australian and British press, they can't wait. I don't know how it translated there. For some reason it did."

On why he opted not to be part of the upcoming "The Office" series finale: "Here's what I thought: Michael Scott would definitely go back and visit his friends, but he wouldn't do it on camera. Because my feeling, and [executive producer] Greg Daniels agrees, Michael Scott had sort of grown beyond the idea of being on camera, the idea of being documented. And that had been his life for all of those years, and it's the only thing that he really cared about. But our thinking was by the end he had evolved, and being on camera and being a star was not important to him anymore. So I think he's a different guy at this point, and he's enjoying a life, and he found what truly was going to make him happy."

On how the final episode will resonate with him: "I've just been in touch with John Krasinski, and I understand completely what they're going through right now. It was an enormous part of my life, and all of those relationships and friendships that came out of it are very strong and important to me. I know what they're going through with, I think, five episodes left to shoot. They're saying goodbye to something that was very dear to them."