Steve Carell said his 'Welcome to Marwen' character was a challenge to play
Steve Carell hits the big screen this month in "Welcome to Marwen" and his performance apparently moved the man he plays to tears.
"'Welcome to Marwen' was a challenge because it's a guy who is suffering from post-traumatic stress and it's a person who actually has become my friend," Carell said Thursday on "GMA." "There's the added component of responsibility to get it right."
The drama fantasy focuses on Mark Hogancamp, who loses his memory after a devastating attack and recovers through a self-created imaginary world in which he and everyone around him become dolls.
Carell joked that playing a doll was "always my dream."
"When you see yourself in doll form there's a double-edged sword to it because [the doll is] super attractive but way better looking than you are naturally," he said.
The other unnatural part of playing a doll was the "clingy" motion capture suit that he had to wear while filming.
"It's a very clingy, awful thing to wear but it's interesting because, you know, in that environment, it's all these infrared sensors picking up everything you do in 360 degrees and you don't have any props, you have no sets and when you see the final product it's crazy what they've imagined around you," he said.
But the uncomfortable suit was worth it. The film has already received tons of positive reviews.
Carell said Hogancamp is apparently "really excited" about the movie. But Carell said he was worried that Hogancamp didn't initially like it.
"He called me after he saw the first trailer and left a really cryptic message and said 'Hi, Steve, it's Mark, call me.' And I thought, 'Oh no, boy what does that mean,'" he recalled.
"I called him right back and he said 'I watched the trailer 12 times, I've cried every time. That's my life.' He is a sweet, sweet person and an inspiration because he was able to take this terrible hate crime, something awful, and turn it into something really beautiful," Carell said.
Carell has had a full slate of gigs this year. He can also be seen in "Beautiful Boy," where he and Timothée Chalamet play a real-life father and son struggling with an addiction problem. He takes on Donald Rumsfeld in "Vice."
"He's sort of an inscrutable sort of guy. So that was a bit of a challenge," Carell said of playing the former secretary of defense. "It's an interesting character to play because so much of it is just left to your imagination as to what he was like behind the scenes."
"Welcome to Marwen" is in theaters nationwide Dec. 21 and "Vice" hits theaters on Christmas Day.
