Mike Myers Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters | GQ

just a little comedy [Music] wayne's world i grew up near on or about the rough parts of scarborough in the uh suburbs of toronto and uh it's very heavy metal and i was a heavy metal kid this character was just basically everybody i knew who talked that way including myself okay we're just about out of time right but before we go we'd like to take a moment here for a wayne's world salute to the guest jeans girl claudia schiffer schwing swings ted paul she's a babe i had done wayne campbell on canadian tv i first thought i'd done it on stage in punk clubs and then i got on second city main stage in toronto and did a sketch and then there was a show called it's only rock and roll on canadian television and i did wayne's power minute and then i got hired for cyrene live he was in my trunk of characters then lauren said do you want to make a movie he offered me a different movie and me being a dummy and not knowing anything just went no i want to do wayne as a movie and it was like okay we got behind it we went to paramount we made it and we didn't think it was going to get made we didn't think it was going to get released and we didn't think that anybody would go see it and uh it was an unbelievable unbelievable joyous surprise that it just kept being the number one movie for weeks after weeks let this player say she makes me feel kind of funny like when we used to climb the rope in gym class i think one of the biggest leg ups i had was that i was in a film with dana carvey who was one of the greatest comedians to ever be on saturday live i just learned so much from him i think the thing i learned the most because i'm a writer of the stuff is that there's writing and then there's performing and to enjoy performing he's the most joyful performer i've ever worked with if i hadn't worked with dana and learned that you have to get the fun molecules into the funnel that get onto the film i don't think i could have done austin powers it was just great to work with somebody that goes yeah we're supposed to show off we're supposed to have fun that's why they came here austin powers international man of mystery so i grew up in canada but my parents both of them were english and there's nobody more english than an englishman who no longer lives in england and my dad who was very very funny and my biggest champion loved comedy loved comedians he loved all entertainers it was great that the one that he loved the most was peter sellers who was english when the pink panther was on or even down amongst the zed men more obscure or the bobo or i'm all right jack or the ultimate masterpiece of peter sellers which is uh doctor strangelove we all aspire to that we want to touch the hem of that garment you know i said to my dad he goes what do you want to do when you grow up get from liverpool and i said i know i think i want to be an architect because why would you want to do that for be a comedian so i had the opposite of what most people had okay name austin danger powers sex yes please so for me austin powers was that kind of cheeky chappy it was everything that my dad was proud of of being british but another key ingredient of that was bert bachrach and that there was a 60s that bert bachrach embodied that i hadn't really kind of seen put into the movies yet the 60s that most people had done was woodstock hippies but the one that i loved was the monied 60s the international man of mystery 60s and i think the biggest influence was the movie casino royale thank you and welcome to france mr bond i contacted bert bacharach it was my first call and he agreed to be part of it and then he agreed to be in it then elvis costello agreed to be in it ladies and gentlemen mr burt bacharach what the world needs is love i was talking to my brothers i talked to my brothers about seven times a day and i said i thought that you would have to have grown up in my house to like austin powers because it was so specific but again it was such a lovely surprise that it meant something to other people other than just me and my brothers shrek to me it the euro-centric form that is the fairy tale is really about classism when i was approached to do shrek originally i did it as a canadian and i re-recorded it as scottish because that to me seems the most working class but also too i have a love of the scottish people i have scottish ancestry in mostly english but liverpool is it's the pool of life between scotland england and ireland layers onions have layers ogres have layers onions have layers you get it we both have layers i love the idea of taking a fairy tale and turning it on its head and having it be that all the traditional bad guys are good guys and all the traditional good guys are bad guys and i realized it's a dramatic role i mean halfway through i went there's an emotional center here you know the old joke i wouldn't want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member i have always felt that way the concept of going from a self-loathing ogre to a self-accepting ogre was meaningful to me i love you really really really i love you too [Music] i i love playing shrek if i had to do it one shrek a year i'd be thrilled so i married an axe murderer every actor who's given a script is given an opportunity to to shape it and give feedback it was in san francisco i was like if it's san francisco should be beat poems and and beat poetry i love jack kerouac and i would in my life would always be there's no telling what's on the mind of the man going to the fire that is not there you know i dug berlin street once white now steamed with gum that sort of fun kerouac thing so i thought well i'll make him a beat poet in san francisco [Music] she stole my heart and my cat i wanted it to be a genre mix because you know there's a point in a man's life when he's decided to get married and there is a part of them that feels that that makes them ever more closer to dying as much as they're happy to be married there is a well if i'm married then it's kids and if it's kids then i'm retired then i'm dead and so there is a sense of one's own mortality at that moment so i wanted to uh be a comedy thriller wait why don't you just taste it it's got strawberries in it you love strawberries taste and taste i spend 20 minutes making it just take a sip one i'm just gonna go i'm just gonna go okay i am just so incredibly uh grateful i i have to this day people saying to me heed move hide move it's been a great surprising fantastic experience that it's stayed around it's a pentaverit i've been obsessed with secret societies and i put into the script of so i married an axe murderer that the scottish father is obsessed with a group of people called the pentavret who control everything well it's a well-known fact sunny jim that there's a secret society of the five wealthiest people in the world known as the who run everything in the world including the newspapers and meet tri-annually at the secret country mansion in colorado known as the meadows i've just seen the culture since i did that long time ago get more and more into conspiracy theories so i thought well let's bring back the pentavarite you know y'all just kidnapped a black man we've been kidnapping white men for years we want to give you an opportunity as well forget about him basically we're the good guys we want you to trust us why should i trust you white man whiter man older whiter man i don't know what the hell they make out of you i was just sitting around and i thought i grew up in a country where we like the government it's just canada and we like experts you know i mean and people who are experts are kind of taking a beating right now but i thought well what if there was a secret society of five people uh what if they were actually nice and what if i played all five people and what have i also played the guy who was exposing the secret society and what if he was a local journalist because i think local journalists are taking a beating as well but i wanted it to be silly and fun and i wanted to be cinematic and i wanted to be a ride a fun ride like what i was hoping for with austin powers and with wayne's world i just thought that everyone's talking about this serious thing in a very serious way um i would like to talk about this serious thing in a silly way and do what i'd love to do which is characters the makeup man louis zakarian the same guy worked with at saturday night live as a genius made these fantastic character makeups for me and i had a great brilliant director in tim kirkby who's english and eccentric and was able to piece it all together i just think that water will find its right level and i think that once the people start to trust the experts again and once the experts start to serve the people that's also including everybody where it's all inclusive i think we're going to be okay and i i i have to think that way too because i have three kids under the age of 10. so i have to send that into the world that which i would want it to be

Channel: GQ

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Keywords: austin powers, austin powers international man of mystery, celebrity, comedy, gq, gq iconic, gq iconic characters, gq magazine, gq mike meyers, iconic, iconic characters, michael meyers, mike meyers, mike meyers austin powers, mike meyers characters, mike meyers funny, mike meyers gq, mike meyers interview, mike meyers movie, mike meyers movies, mike meyers shrek, mike meyers waynes world, mike myers, pentaverate, shrek, the pentaverate, wayne's world, waynes world

Id: NaOvLoqf1Ns

Length: 11min 2sec (662 seconds)

Published: Fri May 20 2022