<\/p>\n
Steve Carell has been hailed by Judd Apatow for turning The 40-Year-Old Virgin into a comedy classic.<\/p>\n
The movie \u2013\u00a0Judd\u2019s directorial debut and Steve\u2019s first leading role \u2013 marked its 20th anniversary on 11 August and on its original release it grossed more than $177 million at the global box office.<\/p>\n
Judd, 57, reflected on the legacy of the film during an episode of the Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast, hosted by Cheers star Ted Danson \u2013\u00a0saying its success was due to planning with Steve.<\/p>\n
The director explained the idea for the 2005 movie originated from a conversation with the actor, now 62, after the actor\u2019s breakout supporting role in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.<\/p>\n
Judd recalled asking if steve had any concepts for a feature film, and the star pitched a character he had once performed in a comedy sketch.<\/p>\n
Judd said: \u201cHe was in a poker game, and they\u2019re all telling dirty sex stories. And when you get to him, it\u2019s clear he\u2019s never had sex and he\u2019s lying.\u201d<\/p>\n
The director added he could \u201crelate\u201d to the idea, and from there the project was born.<\/p>\n
Ted admitted he had only recently seen the film for the first time.<\/p>\n
Watching it with his wife, Mary Steenburgen, he said the pair \u201chowled with laughter\u201d, describing it as \u201csuch a sweet, loving, raunchy movie\u201d.<\/p>\n
Judd revealed he had recently attended a 20th anniversary screening of the movie, saying: \u201cI got to watch it, having not remembered about 80 percent of what was in it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was laughing and appreciating how many jokes were in it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the film, Steve portrays Andy, a 40-year-old man who has never had sex.<\/p>\n
He works in an electronics store, with coworkers \u2013 played by Paul Rudd, Romany Malco and Seth Rogen \u2013 determined to help him change his circumstances.<\/p>\n
Catherine Keener plays his love interest, Trish, with Kat Dennings portraying her daughter.<\/p>\n
Judd said: \u201cSteve has such a big heart. At the beginning of the process, we were like, \u2018What if we took this very seriously, like emotionally?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Not just like a big dumba** movie, like what his problem is, what emotionally he needs to get over his shame, his sense of feeling less than, and his insecurities, and really write to the truth of it\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd because he\u2019s such a great actor, and so emotionally available, in addition to being the funniest guy ever, he did something really remarkable.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the film\u2019s most enduring scenes involves Andy undergoing a chest waxing.<\/p>\n
Steve endured the process for real, screaming, swearing and shouting now-famous naughty lines.<\/p>\n
Speaking to People magazine at the time the film came out, Steve said: \u201cThere is something inherently male \u2013 I am guessing it is a chromosome we have \u2013 that allows us to find joy in other men\u2019s pain.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judd recalled Carell insisting that \u201cthe audience wouldn\u2019t find it funny unless they believed he was in actual pain\u201d.<\/p>\n
To mark the 20th anniversary of The 40-Year-Old Virgin, the movie will return to cinemas for a week beginning on 22 August.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source uk.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Steve Carell has been hailed by Judd Apatow for turning The 40-Year-Old Virgin into a comedy classic. The movie \u2013\u00a0Judd\u2019s directorial debut and Steve\u2019s first leading role \u2013 marked its 20th anniversary on 11 August and on its original release it grossed more than $177 million at the global box office. Judd, 57, reflected on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1967685,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[317123,348478,348822,319616,348479,348480],"class_list":["post-1967684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-feature-film","tag-judd-apatow","tag-kat-dennings","tag-steve-carell","tag-ted-danson","tag-the-40-year-old-virgin"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Steve-Carell-hailed-by-Judd-Apatow-for-turning-The-40-Year-Old.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1967684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1967684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1967684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1967685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1967684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1967684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1967684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}