John C. Reilly on approaching comedy in a serious manner.

"That’s the agreement when you’re doing comedy. You can’t go, ‘Well, I’ll chase the joke this far.’ I learned that from Will Farrell, actually. If you commit to something, you commit all of the way. I remember [that] Will will do bits - we were doing Talladega Nights and we were having this little get-together at a house I was renting in Charlotte, and he came over a little bit later than everyone else. When he got there, he parked the car and started doing this corny song like, ‘I’m not in love’ on the car stereo, cranked up, and he just sat there looking at me, and he moved really slowly like he was stalking me and then he pulled away. He did that eight times and it was actually an hour before he got to come into the house. So they all taught me - Adam McKay, Will Farrell, Judd [Apatow], and Jake - that’s the agreement. If you’re going to chase a joke down, you have to chase it all of the way and you have to throw everything you have in the line of fire, including your body, your dignity, and your reputation. And watching Will run around in his underwear in Talladega Nights, I thought, ‘Man, that guy is brave. Look at him!’"

Reilly on throwing everything he has into a role:

"That’s the way I’ve always done it. I remember on my first movie, Casualties of War, I was in Thailand and there was this big rehearsal room with all of these actors there, and I was just playing like a day-player part at that point. I actually got bumped up to one of the leads in the movie and I come from the theatre. I’d never done a movie or been out of the country before, or anything, so I was the new kid. They had a scene with an old Vietnamese villager that the soldiers come upon and they didn’t have the old guy. So they said, ‘Okay, John. Read the old Vietnamese guy.’ So I take it and approach it like a theatre actor. I just started talking and was fully committed to it and I remember Sean [Penn] smirking and probably thinking, ‘Who the hell is this kid, acting like he’s 80 years old and attempting to speak Vietnamese?’ That’s the only way I know how to do it and I don’t view it like there’s a big difference between comedic acting and dramatic acting. You just push yourself to do it as honestly as you can and if the circumstances of the scene are ridiculous, then you’re in a comedy."

John C. Reilly on the additional challenge of doing music in Walk Hard:

"A challenge, I don’t know. I’m sort of a chameleon anyway and I think that’s why I got into acting. I don’t even know who I really am anymore; I think I’m just the sum of my characters to tell you the truth. So to be able to do all of these musical styles is way more fun than any straight biopic, because if I had done the Johnny Cash story or the Roy Orbison story - those guys did basically one type of music. Well, they did some changes throughout their careers, but not like Dewy Cox. I just took to it like a duck to water. I loved changing my voice and changing the point of view of the character as he went through these different time periods. It was a really cool part about making this movie."

John C. Reilly Walks Hard with Dewey Cox Page 2