While he was still at SNL, Ferrell began dallying in movies, including the deservedly disliked A Night at the Roxbury, in which he played a dorkish poseur whose delusions of cool are undermined by the fact that — you guessed it — he still lives at home with his parents. His fortunes changed with a part in Ben Stiller’s 2001 catwalk comedy Zoolander. Ferrell quit SNL a year later, and the rest is a tally of box-office figures with zeroes on the end like never-ending smoke rings.
Anchorman, Talladega Nights (2006) and Blades of Glory (2007) were all hits, and McKay confirms that an Anchorman sequel is on the boil. While the Frat Pack has more or less dispersed, Ferrell is tight with the new comedy kings: Judd Apatow, who produced Step Brothers, and Seth Rogen, who has a cameo part in the film.
But is there a change in the offing? In 2005, Ferrell took his first straightish part, as a tax inspector who hears a voice narrating his life, in Stranger Than Fiction. It was a quirky film that provided him with one of those semi-dramatic roles comics love because it shows off their range. Today, Ferrell is weighing up other “straight” scripts. “I don’t have this yearning to be respected or taken seriously. But it does bother me that comedy isn’t considered hard to do.”
He put his case most eloquently in a song he performed with Jack Black and John C. Reilly at the 2007 Academy awards ceremony. It began with Ferrell reciting: “A comedian at the Oscars/ Is the saddest man of all/ Your movies may make millions/ But your name they’ll never call,” and ended with him resolving to play “a guy with no arms and legs/ Who teaches gang bangers Hamlet.” Somewhere in between, he wistfully imagined dining with Jeremy Irons, then threatened to break Ryan Gosling’s hips.
As with most comedy, its intent was deadly serious. “I don’t think the producers of the show even got what we were doing,” he says, despair creeping into his voice. “They were backstage saying, ‘Oh, that was lovely. Very funny.’ They didn’t realize every word was true.”
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