Steve Carell Quotes

I joined an improv group in college, which was a lot of fun. After I graduated, I moved to Chicago to try to get into the Second City.

My comedy is different every time I do it. I don't know what the hell I'm doing.

I did comedies for 10 years and I learned a great deal.

So what's so enticing about doing a play is that you get to do that thing that got you into acting in the first place... There's a real attraction to being able to play, to just play. And that's something that theater affords you.

I grew up in Chicago and was a huge fan of 'The Second City', so when I moved to L.A., I was looking for anything that resembled that... then I started 'The Groundlings', so I went to a show and it was very much like 'Second City'. I was so impressed that that same night I went backstage and I went up to the funniest person there.

The Second City

I was the cocktail waitress, and Sandra Bullock was the host, and this guy came in and persuaded me to try improv with Gotham City Improv.

I've been doing improv since high school, and I've been getting paid for it since I was 20.

I love UCB Chelsea. There is, to me, no stage like it.

I absolutely loved improv! I felt very much at home being onstage. It freed me to be all sorts of people other than myself. It was an escape from myself, if you will. I still love that creative freedom of improv and making people laugh.

When I was in third grade I taught myself ventriloquism... What's hard is to learn to be an entertainer and make people laugh. I was a few years out of college before I felt I had enough material. Then in 1988 I moved to L.A. and started to do some shows at comedy clubs.

I come from the world of improv; I love any show or any vehicle that gives me an opportunity to be in the moment.

As rewarding as a good film role can be, there is just nothing like getting up on a stage and taking an audience for a ride.

When I was at Upright Citizens Brigade, I would pretend to be a sad, drunk rapper.

The beautiful thing about stand-up is you can create and immediately deliver, perform, and get paid for what you do.

If you do television, and it's great, it's the best job there is. Every week it's another opportunity to really make that work and figure out how to make it work better. I love that it's like theater too, and the audience, and it's so short, like twenty minutes... It's like a Haiku or something.

I was born to do sitcoms, where you get an immediate response from the audience.

We do long-form-style improv. Our focus was characters and telling a long arc story over about an hour and a half. It was closer to a one-act play than one-off sketches.

I've always really liked theater. It fascinated me. You can create a reality and get people involved in that reality. It takes place in real time.

With a play, for me, there's no time to sit back on it. You're living on your instincts. And every night there are subtle changes and adjustments, because what's in front of you is a living, breathing audience.

I think that providing obstructions in the live setting is when you get something that actually means something, as opposed to just aping your way through your greatest hits.

I do my best creating on stage.

Stand-up came out of three things. Frustration, necessity and arrogance. I didn't have a great career ahead of me in anything. Someone literally said to me, 'You should try stand-up,' and took me to a venue.

I haven't done improv since I was in middle school.

There's nothing like a play. It's so immediate and every performance is different. As an actor, you have the most control over what the audience is seeing.