After four years off, Mike Myers finally returns to the big screen in The Guru.  His last live-action movie was 2003’s The Cat in the Hat.

He finally returns with The Love Guru, which hits screens June 20. The film, which also stars Jessica Alba, Justin Timberlake and Ben Kingsley, features Myers as Pitka, an American left as a child at the gates of an ashram in India. Pitka becomes a self-help guru who tries to smooth the marital rift of a hockey star and his wife.

Myers, a native of Ontario, says he wrote the film because of his interests in Eastern philosophy and hockey. But he isn’t the type to zip out a script the moment an idea hits.

“I enjoy having the Lamaze birthing process of it,” says Myers, who also authored the Wayne’s World and Austin Powers franchises. “It usually takes me three, 3½ years in between characters.”

Why so long? He’s very protective of his original live-action characters. “I’ve written and created everything I’ve done, and it takes me a year to reflect on what I’ve done, a year to let the idea incubate and a year to create” a new character.

For Pitka, that included playing a philosopher of Eastern religion in New York and Los Angeles, where some unsuspecting passersby sought advice from Myers, who never broke from character.

“They asked some very spiritual and deep questions,” he says. “It’s been fascinating combining comedy with a nice life-affirming message.”

Fascinating, if challenging. He knows combining comedy, hockey and Eastern principles is a little “like figuring out how they got the peanut butter in the chocolate and the chocolate in the peanut butter.”

But he didn’t expect the Wayne’s World or Austin Powers films to be successes, either.

“When I did Wayne’s World, I thought you had to grow up in my neighborhood to get it,” he says. “When I did Austin, I thought you had to grow up in my house to get it, because my parents are from Liverpool. But I’ve been very lucky to create things people have liked, so I have to stay true to the things that interest me.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 at 10:19 am and is filed under Jessica Alba, Mike Myers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.