STEVE CARELL

Being a leading man... that's like saying, 'I want to be astronaut.' That's not going to happen.

I'd love to do Broadway some day. Before I started doing television I was just a primarily a stage actor, but I haven't done it in a while.

You know what Disneyland is known for? The Big Turkey Leg. People walk around with enormous deep-fried turkey legs. Like little kids, three-year-old kids eating these five-pound turkey legs.

I know I'm not a woman's fantasy man; I don't have to uphold this image of male beauty, so that's kind of a relief in a way.

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.

I'm not unattractive, but I'm not a matinee idol. I think I have a very non-threatening look - I'm fine, I'm right in the middle.

I'm a fun dad, but I don't know if I'm the fun, crazy dad.

There's very little you could do to prepare to be a correspondent on 'The Daily Show,' because it's not being a journalist, it's not being an actor. It involves elements of both of those things, but they're not required necessarily as job experience. It's helpful if you know how to improvise, but again, not a requirement.

Like most people, I have painful memories of trying to fit in as a child. I wore, said, and did pretty much what everyone else did.

If somebody takes the parking place you were waiting for, I tend to kind of let it roll off my back. Maybe I'm harboring a lot of something and it will all explode somewhere down the road, but I tend to just let it slide off my back.

I've thought a lot about success, because it's very strange to me that I've been successful.

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.

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.'

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.

I have no idea where my pathetic nature comes from. If I thought about it too long, it would depress me.

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

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

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.

I remember my wife wanted me to go see 'Contagion,' and I was like, 'Oh my God, why would I want to see that movie?' I mean, I'll just have nightmares and it will freak me out. It turned out that I really enjoyed it; I thought it was very well done.

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.

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.

When you do an animated movie - at least the ones that I've been a part of - you never see any of the other actors. It's all done separately with headphones in a voice booth.

I would like for my kids to at least have some familiarity with who I am: 'It's the man from TV!'

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

Once I moved to Chicago and started trying to get acting jobs, I just tended to book more things that were comedically based than anything else. I never had the preconceived notion, 'I will be a comedic actor.' I just thought, 'I'll go into acting and see what kind of work I can get.'