How did I end up in films with people like Keira Knightley... all these beautiful leading ladies and me - it's kind of shocking.

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.

[And on going from character to leading actor] I don't approach anything differently; I just approach it as a character. I'm always astounded at the fact that I've ever played a leading character in anything [Laughs]. And my wife concurs with that, frankly. She always thought I would be, at best, the wacky neighbor on a sitcom, so this is all just a surprise and a joy.

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.

Well, on a personal level, I would never want to take on a character who didn’t have some redeemable qualities. Even the worst of people, such as Michael Scott in The Office [Carell’s character in the US version of the Ricky Gervais sitcom], have some decent human qualities that you can latch onto.

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.

There's very little you could do to prepare to be a correspondent on The Daily Show, because it's not being a journalist, it's not being an actor. It involves elements of both of those things, but they're not required necessarily as job experience. It's helpful if you know how to improvise, but again, not a requirement.