Steve Carell

’ll be honest – I was a dull kid,” Steve Carell grins. “I wouldn’t say I was straight-laced, but I wasn’t a party guy. I played a lot of sports, I was in school plays, I was on the student council, I was on the social committee.” When you meet him, this all makes perfect sense. He’s disarmingly warm, and has a cackle of a laugh that fills every corner of the hotel room in Mayfair we’re sitting in. Of course he was on the social committee and the school council. Steve Carell is guy. I tell him that the much-maligned 2010 remake of is one of my mum’s favourite films, and he laughs – not politely, but sincerely. It’s the same laugh I grew up hearing when I watched him in . “ was a fun one,” he sighs. “A critic actually told me the other day that they really loved ,” he says, as if he’s genuinely surprised. “It’s so subjective what might be appealing to people or what might strike a chord in someone.” The common factor is, of course, Carell. He’s charismatic but entirely without pretense, enthusing about how excited he was to meet Laura Dern, “Oh, you’ve gotta meet her!” There’s something pleasingly normal but undeniably compelling about him, and it comes from a full-bodied commitment to his craft.