Role Recall: John C. Reilly Remembers 'Boogie Nights,' 'Chicago,' 'Step Brothers,' and More

John C. Reilly is one of the few actors around equally comfortable in a prestige drama from Terrence Malick or Martin Scorsese as in a wackadoo comedy opposite Will Ferrell. Reilly is right at home, then, in The Lobster, Yorgos Lanthimos’s acclaimed, dark yet hilarious new film that takes place in a draconian future where people who can’t find mates are turned into animals.

Related: Colin Farrell Talks ‘Absurd’ New Gem 'The Lobster’ and Gaining 40 Pounds for the Part

Oh, yeah, and Reilly can sing his butt off, too. The 50-year-old earned an Oscar nomination for playing the lowly Amos Hart in the hit musical and Best Picture winner Chicago (named for Reilly’s hometown). Then there are films like Walk Hard, which combine the actor’s comedic and musical talents… all delivered with a dramatic undertone. “I approach comedy as if it’s a drama, and that’s what makes it funny,” Reilly told Yahoo Movies in our new episode of Role Recall (watch above). Some highlights:

Casualties of War (1989)
Reilly made his screen debut at 22 in this Vietnam War drama directed by Brian De Palma, who was so impressed with the actor’s work that the filmmaker expanded Reilly’s role in the film. “That movie was insane for me,” he said. “It was the first time I had ever been on an airplane, the first time I had ever been out of the Midwest, the first time I had ever been in a movie. It was wild.”

Boogie Nights (1997)
“I just remember that as being the best summer of my life,” Reilly said about this beloved '70s porn industry tale directed by his close friend and longtime collaborator Paul Thomas Anderson and featuring an ensemble that included Mark Wahlberg, Burt Reynolds, Julianne Moore, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. “We were pulling all these people into our mad world of improvisation and our sense of humor.”

Related: Mark Wahlberg Role Recall—‘Boogie Nights,’ ‘Three Kings,’ ‘The Departed,’ and More

Chicago (2002)
Reilly described what it was like to film his solo number, “Mr. Cellophane,” in this song-and-dance hit, one of three Reilly films that earned a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars that year (it beat out Gangs of New York and The Hours). “We were in this cavernous, industrial space… and it was pitch black in front of me. So to me it was just like being on stage and performing. I couldn’t see the cameras, I couldn’t see the crew, I couldn’t see anybody.”

Step Brothers (2008)
Reilly had a string of big comedy hits in the '00s, including Talladega Nights and Walk Hard, but none gets him more admirers than this laugher that paired him with Ferrell as highly stunted man-children whose parents marry. “People come up to me every day about that movie,” he said. “For a big, broad comedy, people found a lot of common ground in that movie.”

The Lobster is now in select theaters. Watch the trailer: