Funny man Ferrell is soft on the inside

LOS ANGELES -- Will Ferrell's mellow exterior is like comic camouflage.

The former "Saturday Night Live" star is surprisingly modest and soft-spoken, traits he says help him sneak up on audiences and turn deadpan characters into jokes.

"That's always been my thing: the guy you wouldn't expect to have that crazy side to him . . . that kind of guy who could be your next- door neighbor," said Ferrell, who is launching his full-time movie career in the comedy "Old School," also starring Vince Vaughn and Luke Wilson.

On "SNL," many of his characters seemed uptight to the point of implosion, from the eternally vexed "Jeopardy!" host Alex Trebek to the fanatical male cheerleader, Craig, and the Abe Lincoln-bearded music teacher Marty Culp and his geeky renditions of edgy, hardcore music.

Even his dim-bulb impression of President George W. Bush -- played to the height of squinty smugness -- seemed to be masking the character's intense uncertainty.

In "Old School," Ferrell plays a mild-mannered guy whose new marriage sends him into a wild-man breakdown.

His character and two friends (Vaughn and Wilson) retreat from adulthood by starting their own fraternity, which leads to antics such as Ferrell streaking down the streets of a sleepy neighborhood.

"A lot of actors can play 'anger' and 'fear' and 'happiness,' but I think Will Ferrell is the one actor who can play 'embarrassed' better than anybody," said "Old School" director Todd Phillips. "I think it's instinctive. He just has this look that says, 'I don't know why this is happening and what did I do to deserve this?"'

The 35-year-old actor says his sense of humor "never came from a needy place, like 'look what I can do!' But if someone were to dare me to run across the street naked, I'd say, 'OK,' very workmanlike, and go do it."

Ferrell, an Irvine, Calif., native who lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Viveca, said he had little interest in show business when he was a boy. His father, Lee, is a keyboard player with the Righteous Brothers, and Ferrell said that as a child, he didn't like the inconsistency of a performer's lifestyle.

"Living from week to week and month to month, having a gig for a while that runs out. . . . As a kid, I was very conscious of it to the point where I was like, 'I'm going to be a businessman.' I was going to be something normal," Ferrell said.

He said he was always funny with his friends, but didn't become interested in comedy as a career until high school, while writing jokey morning announcements to help sell T-shirts for a class trip.

"Even teachers would come up and be like, 'Aw, that was so funny! When are you guys going to do your next one?' " Ferrell recalled. "I would sit and spend four hours trying to write four lines, really trying to get it down. That's when I kind of took a mental note that this doesn't feel like work. It's just fun. It was the first inkling I had."

After studying at the University of Southern California to be a sports journalist, Ferrell became active with The Groundlings comedy troupe, where he eventually caught the attention of "Saturday Night Live" scouts. He left last May, ending a seven-year run on the NBC late-night comedy show.

Ferrell made his movie breakthrough in 1997's "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery," playing the hapless henchman Mustafa, the victim of a comically botched incineration by Dr. Evil ("SNL" alum Mike Myers).

The next year, he co-starred with "SNL" cohort Chris Kattan as a pair of club-hopping, head-bopping brothers in "A Night at the Roxbury," which, like many "SNL" spinoffs, was a modest box-office success that critics loathed.

His small, oddball film roles also include a befuddled version of Watergate investigator Bob Woodward in the Nixon spoof "Dick," the frantic wildlife ranger in "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" and the flamboyant fashion villain Mugatu in "Zoolander."

He is presently filming "Elf," about a clumsy, oversized helper in Santa's workshop.

Ferrell hopes box-office success for "Old School" will give him the chance to develop some of his own scripts, such as one about a stuffy news anchorman and another about fierce competition among car salesmen.

He hopes to build the kind of trust in Hollywood that he had with "SNL" producer Lorne Michaels, who gave him the chance to do increasingly high-concept bits.

However, studio executives remain wary of his peculiar sensibilities.

"It's like you're starting over again. I got into one club and now I'm trying to get into another club," Ferrell said. "I'm very much at that stage (with studio bosses) where it's like, 'No, no, no, we know. ... He's very funny. But what's this idea again? ... Oh, I don't know. ... But will you do OUR bad idea?"'

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