Mike Myers Interview for 'The Love Guru'

14 Questions With: Mike Myers

He's rocked out on public access, been a groovy secret agent, an eeee-vil madman and a fairytale ogre. Now Mike Myers works an Indian accent, an enlightened attitude and a whole lotta facial hair as Pitka, aka 'The Love Guru' -- Myers' first live-action role since 2003's 'The Cat in the Hat.' Moviefone talked to the star about philosophies, loving Oprah, his favorite accent and the most Canadian sentence he's ever spoken. -- By Maggie Furlong

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1. How did the idea for 'The Love Guru' come about?
In 1991, my father passed away -- it was around that time that I saw Deepak Chopra on 'Oprah' [laughs] and I became very interested in philosophy; I read his book and loved it. It got back to me that Deepak was like "Would you like to meet?" and I was like "Absolutely!" It's been a friendship ever since -- he's not only a great philosopher and writer but also can point anybody in the direction of other writings and ideas. One day this voice of the Love Guru emerged and I started to say things like "The only way out is in" and "Intimacy is In-to-Me-I-See."

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2. And Deepak Chopra was up for this?
I spoke to him a while ago about it. There's another person too that I was reading at the time, Gary Zukav, who wrote a book called 'Seat of the Soul.' I'd also seen Gary Zukav on 'Oprah' and I thought his book was awesome -- it spoke to me. This was another person who was a tremendous influence in broadening my horizons. I'm a voracious reader and I've been reading a lot ever since. So Deepak ... it's been a dialogue with him for many, many years now. A wonderful dialogue.

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3. So you're a voracious reader and, apparently, a huge fan of 'Oprah'! Is she part of your daily routine?
I don't have a daily routine of doing anything. [Laughs] I have eclectic interests -- I love Oprah, I love hockey, I love the ukulele, I love the Beatles, I love any show where there's earth movers -- you know, like big dumpster trucks and stuff -- and 'Meerkat Manor.' It's a wide eclectic world of stuff that I'm interested in. And Oprah ... I admire greatly. This experience she's having on Earth is a great one. It's an expansive one, and it's an empowering one -- she's helping a lot of people.

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4. The movie is filled with words that are fun to say with an Indian accent. Was there still a lot more that got nixed?
Oh, much of the movie! You know, Lorne Michaels has been doing 'Saturday Night Live' for 30 years now, [and] he produces a half-hour more than actually is shown. Every year, an efficiency expert from the network comes by and questions why Lorne produces 12 sketches and only airs eight of them. And every year he says, "Because I don't know." [Laughs] It's the same with anything -- you always write way more than you actually show in the film.

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5. Now how did Ben Kingsley get involved? Something about having a knighted Sir walking around cross-eyed and telling dirty jokes just makes me laugh ...
I sent him the script and he read [it] and understood exactly the tone of what it is we were trying to do: a very, very silly comedy that has a message. The message is you have to love yourself before others can love you, you are responsible for your own health and happiness and to be enlightened is to lighten up. I think very silly is a very viable delivery system of ideas.

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6. There were a bunch of great cameos in the movie -- how do you pick who will appear? Or do people beg you?
I've been very lucky that a lot of people have been [in] cameos in my movies over the years -- what people kind of know is that it's a party, a filmed party. What I want to do is create a great, fun atmosphere and then put that on film. In 'Goldmember' there was Tom Cruise and Kevin Spacey, Steven Spielberg and Gwyneth Paltrow, Danny DeVito, John Travolta ... it's just an unbelievable group of people who say yes and come to play.

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7. And now you can add Kanye West to that list for 'Love Guru.' Did you just remind him that he owed you after his awkward George Bush/black people comment?
No, not even -- I had done a sketch on 'Saturday Night Live' about it. I went to the Katrina telethon because I was very moved by the plight of the people in New Orleans and I wanted to make a difference. I think that the frustration that Kanye expressed was valid ... I just think you gotta tell a feller you're gonna say it. [Laughs] Just tell a feller, would ya?

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8. Do you consider yourself to be a political person?
I don't feel that being political is my forte -- doing characters and sort of speaking what's on my mind has been something I'm more comfortable with. I admire political comedy, it's just not anything that I've ever been good at.

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9. Are you registered to vote in the U.S.? And have you publicly backed any candidates?
I am [registered] ... but no. It's a very odd thing. My relationship with people who come to see my films -- my promise -- is that I'm going to try my best to be as entertaining as possible. So it's a hard thing for me to say to people, "Look, you might like what I've done in a movie -- now I want you to like my political views." I don't know what the code of conduct is of that, you know what I'm saying?


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