Hedges: I’ve been trying to finish a novel I’ve been working on for a decade. I wrote a script for Tobey Maguire, which I’m hoping to do with Sony next. I had that obligation. I rewrote “Dan in Real Life” and they asked me to direct it. I never thought it was going to be a film I would direct. I was just burning off an obligation to them. They sent me a box of scripts and I pulled out Pierce’s “Dan in Real Life,” and just thought, “I really like this.

I think I can help it.” I was to work on it for four weeks, but I wrote on it for five months, and they greenlit the movie on the condition that I direct it. I was going to make a film for Focus, a book they had bought for me and I also had a commitment to write this film for Tobey, and Disney was willing to wait. They basically kept just making it so attractive for me to make the film. They supported ideas like Steve Carell as Dan, and we cast Steve right before “40-Year-Old Virgin” came out.

I cast Dane Cook without auditioning him before he was cast in any of the movies you’ve seen him in the last two years. I just felt he was going to be great with Steve, and then I looked far and wide for the right Marie. Steve gave me this direction, “Find someone with a really good heart.” To me, Juliette Binoche is one of the greatest actresses alive. I mean, there’s Meryl Streep and then we go from there, but she’s so high up.

When I heard that she’d read the script and wanted to meet, I went to Paris immediately, and I shut down talking to anybody else. I met with almost 40, 42 actresses to play the part. I was just looking for that person who I thought would be very special with Steve, and I learned from “40-Year-Old Virgin” that Catherine Keener and Steve Carell were so good together, it told me that if you find the right partner for Steve, it really can elevate what could be a very simple film.