I'd be a terrible spy, admits Steve

11:21am Wednesday 20th August 2008

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Steve Carell may play a special agent in new movie Get Smart, but in real life he reckons he wouldn't be too good at espionage.

"I think I'd be a terrible spy," he admits. "I'm not particularly intelligent, athletic and I'm not cagey. I think if you looked at me and I was hiding something then you would know immediately. I don't think I could be very secretive so I think I'd kind of fail on all accounts."

Despite being an unlikely 007, Steve is a big fan of the spy genre.

"I'm a huge fan of spy movies and that's what we tried to do with this movie. We tried to make it a legitimate spy movie that was also funny," he explains. "So there is action, it's exciting and it's fun at the same time."

Steve plays bumbling agent Maxwell Smart in the new film, which comes out on August 22, opposite Anne Hathaway and Alan Arkin.

"(Maxwell) is someone that starts as an analyst at a spy agency called Control and he is promoted to a fully fledged agent later in life," he says.

"So it's something he always looked forward to. He is someone who is a bit over-eager and a bit counter-intuitive. He's not a bad spy, he knows how to handle a gun, he knows how to fight, but he's a bit quirky in his methods."