Carell Gets Past First Base

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The leading men of comedy today come in several different varieties. The postmodern swinger (think Vince Vaughn), the nebbish nuevo -Woody Allens (Ben Stiller), the physical pratfaller (Jim Carrey), the village idiot (Adam Sandler), the edgy urban (Chris Rock). Carell's niche might be seen as the dad-dweeb, a Patio Man, to borrow David Brooks's descriptor, a suburban canvas, a scoop of vanilla low-fat yogurt with sprinkles of pure deadpan.

Carell thinks for a moment about this. "Yes, that would be nice," he says. "But I don't think I've arrived at the level where people classify me as anything." A pause. Another blink. "But I honestly don't think people know who I am, and that's fine."

Here's what you need to consider: Carell did not come up through the ranks doing stand-up. No, he thought he would become a lawyer. "I sat down to fill out the application and I couldn't figure out how to answer the essay question, why do you want to be an attorney, and it was that simple."

We suggest he could have simply filled in the essay with $$$ signs.

"Which would sound better than 'that's what my parents want me to be.' " Law school, he imagined, "sounded better than aspiring actor. Or unemployed actor. Or waiter."

He was all three, back in the days when he lived in Chicago after graduation from Denison University in Ohio (major? history), working in the world of children's theater, performing bits from the Narnia chronicles before fidgety grade-schoolers.

About which, he says, "you reach a saturation point in children's theater."

Before you become Krusty the Klown?

"Yes. This defining moment when you have to stop or embrace it completely, and I chose the former."

And he got his first big break, full-time employment with the famed improv troupe Second City, whose alumni (Jim Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Chris Farley, Mike Myers, Tina Fey) have filled the ranks of "Saturday Night Live" for two generations, and where he met the man who would change his life, his evil twin, Stephen Colbert.

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