Focus Features

In this weekend's Los Angeles Times' "The Sunday Conversation: Steve Carell, romantic leading man," Irene Lacher speaks to the star of SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD about his film, his life and his status as a leading man. It's a sweet talk, with a funny aside about how his status as a romantic leading man affects his marriage to Nancy Walls (who appears in SEEKING A FRIEND as the wife that leaves him). Considering his costars -- Juliette Binoche, Julianne Moore, Anne Hathaway, Tina Fey, and now Keira Knightley -- Carell confesses: "Nancy isn't threatened. She just laughs. In order to be threatened, she would have to think that I would stand a chance with any of those women." He also speaks to what made Lorene Scafaria's apocalyptic comedy so attractive to him: "I see it as a metaphor for everyone, that we have a finite time here and you have to at some point ask yourself how you're going to live that life and to what degree you're going to live it and what aspects of it you're going to embrace and cherish. In that way, I find the movie to be very uplifting."