Actor Steve Carell used to be so desperate to act, he would have accepted "almost everything short of pornography" to remain employed.
The American funnyman has garnered worldwide fame thanks to films such as The 40-Year-Old Virgin and the Anchorman movies as well as his popular stint in US TV show The Office. Although he didn't set out to be a comedy actor at the beginning, Steve admits he would have taken on almost anything to survive as a performer.
"I didn’t set the bar very high for myself, I’ll be honest," he told the New York Times. "I didn’t have a vision. I just wanted to be employed, and I was willing to do almost everything short of pornography to continue working as an actor. I know that’s a pretty horrible image."
Steve has managed to drop his humorous side for a few roles though, such as his Oscar-nominated turn as real-life boxing coach John du Pont in drama movie Foxcatcher. His latest feature The Big Short, co-starring the likes of Brad Pitt and Christian Bale, follows four finance workers who predicted the credit and housing market collapse in the US during the mid-2000s. Steve's character Mark Baum is loosely based around real-life money manager Steve Eisman, who sold unethical home mortgages in order to benefit himself
"I try not to play characters that ever have any self-awareness that their conviction is boneheaded," Steve reasoned. "And I think that can either be funny or dramatic. After all, a character doesn’t know whether they’re in a comedy or a drama."
Steve recently went to a screening of the finished film in Orange County, and was pleased by the impact it had on some of the audience members: "One woman said: 'Boy, I feel like I learned something. I’m smarter, but not in a bad way.' Like, it was informational, it taught me something, but it didn’t feel like going to school. It didn’t feel like a lecture. I thought that was great."
