Steve Carell Quotes

#1. I don't think of myself as funny - I don't fill up a room with my humor ... I would fail miserably as a stand-up comedian.

Steve Carell

#2. 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

#3. The best food is in Chicago. There are great restaurants everywhere, from fancy places to burger joints.

Steve Carell

#4. 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

#5. You're so in love with your children that you'd do anything for them; that's not necessarily the best thing.

Steve Carell

#6. What kind of person would have a real craving for gummy worms?

Steve Carell

#7. 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

#8. I'm not superstitious, but I'm a little stitious.

Steve Carell

#9. It's nice to find people who live on the fringe, finding one another and she's just unrelentingly funny.

Steve Carell

#10. Different things just strike people differently. And it's so subjective, too. Because what makes one person laugh won't make others laugh. I guess it's kind of checkerboarded.

Steve Carell

#11. 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

#12. 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

#13. 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

#14. It's interesting when you're trying to create a character in animation. It's really a communal effort.

Steve Carell

#15. Everybody should be normal. Everybody should be nice. I think they go hand in hand, and that to me is the default setting.

Steve Carell

#16. 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

#17. You know, what's funny to one person is not at all to someone else.

Steve Carell

#18. Anything nice that's said about me is diametrically opposed to who I am.

Steve Carell

#19. I think ultimately, when you believe somebody is going through a situation and it's either awkward or ridiculous, but you believe it, that can be funny.

Steve Carell

#20. 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

#21. It's not a master plan to do every remake and every recreation of icons. It's just what I've been hired to do.

Steve Carell

#22. Being an action star is all I had ever hoped to be. I ultimately knew I would be an action star.

Steve Carell

#23. Taste in comedy, like fashion, changes all the time.

Steve Carell

#24. 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

#25. I think there's a little bit of idiot in everybody and I think some people cover it better than others but I think I am very much a guy who wears his heart on his sleeve.

Steve Carell

#26. Steve Buscemi is hilarious. He's really, really good with improv.

Steve Carell

#27. Don't underestimate your kids. Don't be condescending, because they're children but they're not stupid.

Steve Carell

#28. In my wildest dreams I never thought - well, I never thought I'd work.

Steve Carell

#29. I don't like to get angry. It doesn't make me feel good. It is very human, but it's also a loss of control, and I like to have that kind of control.

Steve Carell

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

Steve Carell

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

Steve Carell

#32. 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.

Steve Carell

#33. I ate fiberglass insulation. It wasn't cotton candy like the guy said ... my tummy itches.

Steve Carell

#34. I hate hospitals, in my mind they are associated with sickness.

Steve Carell

#35. 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

#36. 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

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

Steve Carell

#38. Everyone is flawed and everyone makes mistakes and is culpable.

Steve Carell

#39. 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

#40. 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

#41. 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

#42. 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

#43. 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

#44. 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

#45. 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

#46. 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

#47. 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

#48. People say, 'What's the secret to a marriage?' There's no secret - I think you get lucky.

Steve Carell

#49. I've waited my entire life to be busy. Whenever I hear actors complain about being busy, I think, 'shut up.' Because you do, you wait to be successful or to be able to work.

Steve Carell

#50. 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

#51. 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

#52. 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

#53. People generally have sex fairly young, and probably younger than they should be having it.

Steve Carell

#54. I had a lot of coaches growing up that were very hard on the kids in the name of building character, but it could have the opposite effect on kids.

Steve Carell

#55. 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

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

Steve Carell

#57. 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

#58. 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

#59. I'm not a crazy Vegas guy. I'm not a gambler.

Steve Carell

#60. I don't know how other people perceive the lives of actors, but my life is fairly ordinary. I go to work, I come home, I put my kids to bed. If I'm home in time for dinner, I have dinner, and then it's bedtime.

Steve Carell

#61. 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

#62. 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

#63. The ability to compromise and having the ability to laugh at ourselves is huge and works well for me.

Steve Carell

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

Steve Carell

#65. Even the most self-confident people, at one point of their lives, felt like outsiders or felt like they weren't being heard or seen or witnessed in some way.

Steve Carell

#66. People just like to be on camera. There's a huge desire to be in front of the camera, and once there, people will say and do almost anything. It's sort of a drug, and I think people get addicted to it.

Steve Carell

#67. 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

#68. There's such a freewheeling nature to 'Second City,' and the greatest thing about 'Second City' was having a sophisticated audience night after night who appreciated what it was. They knew it wasn't all going to be great when you improvised, so they were very forgiving that way.

Steve Carell

#69. 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

#70. 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

#71. 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

#72. 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

#73. 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

#74. 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

#75. I don't think my kids have to worry too much about me embarrassing them because that's not how I would want to grow up, with wacky dad showing up at school and performing for everyone.

Steve Carell

#76. Divorce is fairly common these days, and I think many times people disregard the emotional impact that divorce has on a couple and a family, because it happens so frequently.

Steve Carell

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

Steve Carell

#78. I had a friend who, after 25 years of marriage, found himself trying to date again, and it was completely different. Everything had changed, and he had to reacquaint himself. It was funny even talking to him about it. For someone who has been out of the loop, it's a different world.

Steve Carell

#79. I don't ever want to take a part in order to prove that I'm capable of doing something. It's all based in doing stuff that's interesting or working with people who would be fun to work with.

Steve Carell

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

Steve Carell

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

Steve Carell

#82. Nothing to me feels as good as laughing incredibly hard.

Steve Carell

#83. 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

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

Steve Carell

#85. 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

#86. I was a bad dater, and up until 8th grade I went to an all boy's school. So, by the time I hit high school I was a bit freaked out by women in general.

Steve Carell

#87. I look at improvising as a prolonged game of chess. There's an opening gambit with your pawn in a complex game I have with one character, and lots of side games with other characters, and another game with myself - and in each game you make all these tiny, tiny moves that get you to the endgame.

Steve Carell

#88. 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

#89. 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

#90. You never saw Peter Sellers the actor trying to make you laugh. All he was doing was the character. What I'm saying is that I don't think you should know you're in a movie. I don't like it when actors are winking at the audience and saying, 'Right, isn't this funny? Are you with me?'

Steve Carell

#91. 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.

Steve Carell

#92. Oh, I so don't care about the podium at the Oscars. I've stood at the podium at the Oscars and that's close enough. To be a presenter is as close as I need to be.

Steve Carell

#93. Is it true that if you don't USE it you LOSE it?

Steve Carell

#94. 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

#95. I think anyone loves to play a character that is either evil to a certain extent or has a real definable character flaw. Those are always really fun, and, I think, funny.

Steve Carell

#96. 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.

Steve Carell

#97. 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

#98. 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.

Steve Carell

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

Steve Carell

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

Steve Carell