Esquire has written the least sexy movie-star profile you will ever read about perhaps the nicest guy in show business: Steve Carell. At 56, the actor has three movies coming out this season, including Beautiful Boy, in which he is a father struggling to help and understand his drug-addicted son; Welcome to Marwen, where he plays a brain-damaged trauma victim who finds a new way to cope with emotional wounds; and Vice, the Dick Cheney biopic in which Carell plays former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Carell has spent two decades playing some of the nicest characters in history notes Esquire, adding that and even his “problematic” characters offer glimpses of vulnerability that make them likable in a different way. Vice might be the biggest challenge yet to Carell’s ability to find a little humanity deep inside, but Carell said that he felt like it was his job to expand the very narrow idea of Rumsfeld that people have.
Carell also addressed the rumors that The Office, in which he played the sometimes-lovable but mostly-inappropriate boss, Michael Scott, returning, especially in the #MeToo era.
“… Apart from the fact that I just don’t think that’s a good idea, it might be impossible to do that show today and have people accept it the way it was accepted ten years ago,” he said. “The climate’s different. I mean, the whole idea of that character, Michael Scott, so much of it was predicated on inappropriate behavior. I mean, he’s certainly not a model boss. A lot of what is depicted on that show is completely wrong-minded. That’s the point, you know? But I just don’t know how that would fly now. There’s a very high awareness of offensive things today—which is good, for sure. But at the same time, when you take a character like that too literally, it doesn’t really work.”
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