John C. Reilly is unlike any celebrity I have ever met.

It’s hard to tell with people who often assume a comic persona where the character ends and the real person begins. Take Will Ferrell, Reilly’s frequent cohort, in films like “Step Brothers,” and “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby”; Ferrell often seems so immersed and committed to his comedy that it feels rare to see him when he’s not “on” in anyway.

Eventually one has to question whether someone is trying to be funny, or if that’s just the way they are. Reilly, however, is naturally funny, and has a personality not unlike the characters he’s played in movies.

That being said, I never once questioned whether he was putting on an act rather than just being himself. Several other college journalists and I met with him to talk about his latest film, “Cyrus,” a comedy about a man named John, played by Reilly, who gets involved with Molly, played by Marisa Tomei. Molly is the woman of John’s dreams, except that she has a grown son named Cyrus, played by Jonah Hill, who feels that he will lose his mother to the new man in her life.

Although “Cyrus” is a comedy, it’s also huge departure for Reilly in comparison to his films with Ferrell. Of course, that’s not to say that Reilly can’t do serious movies.

A Chicago native who studied acting right here at DePaul, Reilly has played a myriad of parts on both the stage and the screen, even earning an Academy Award nomination for his performance in 2002’s “Chicago.” Although he’s known for being a funny guy, he’s all business when talking about his new film.

On “Cyrus” writer/director’s Mark And Jay Duplass, he says, “We shot this on digital video so we did these long takes, and improvised for a long time, and kind of moved around these rooms and figured out the scenes, and then Jay and Mark would go off and talk to each other alone, for 20 minutes, which, was really weird.”

He stops to laugh before continuing, “The crew on this movie were like, ‘Where? The directors are going where? Just down the block? Can we get them anything? No, no they’re just going to go talk, and process what just happen.’ And that’s really one of the main reasons I wanted to do the movie, because I heard they worked like that… we could literally build a story in an organic way… It has a lot of emotional truth to it, the movie.”

When asked about the term “mumblecore,” a supposed movement being led by several filmmakers, including the Duplass brothers, Reilly brushes it away, indicating; the Duplass’s have no patience for labels.

“Not one of them would admit to being ‘mumblecore,’ they hate that name,” he says.

But mumblecore or not, it is clear that Reilly is passionate about “Cyrus,” and tells us that the fact that this movie is a comedy doesn’t mean he takes it less serious than if he were doing a drama.

However, when asked whether he has any favorite stories similar to the party scene in the film, where John gets very drunk, Reilly abandons all seriousness, and drops all discussion about his craft and tells us with a reluctant smile, “Yeah, I wouldn’t say they were favorites.”

He then proceeds to talk about the first time he got drunk in hilarious and extensive detail, going on so long that it is impossible to even paraphrase the whole tale here.

When I try to turn the discussion back to a more serious tone by asking him what kind of characters he’d like to play in the future, I preface it by telling him that he’s played a lot of dyspeptic, everyman sort of characters. He stops me and says, “Dyspeptic, you must go to college.”

I tell him that I’d been rehearsing that word the whole morning, and we all laugh before he gets back to the question.

“Things that I’m like personally interested in, like right now, are books about explorers,” says Reilly. “I got on this like, extreme adventure jag in my reading, I read all about Shakelton, and Colonel Percy Fawcett, who was looking for the lost city of Z, the whale ship Essex, which is what “Moby Dick” is based on.”

Although I’m not sure at first whether he’s joking around, as he continues it becomes clear to me that he’s completely serious. It’s this earnestness that makes Reilly so much fun to talk to. I would never have guessed he’d tell me that explorers are at the top of his list in terms of desired roles, but it is clear that this is another thing he’s passionate about.

In addition to this, Reilly says, “I’ve always wanted to play a priest, growing up Catholic, I thought there was some interesting stuff there.”

Having talked about explorers, someone suggests that he star in a Dan Brown movie He smiles a little bit at this but doesn’t react strongly, that is until about thirty seconds into the next question when he blurts out, “‘The Giordano’s Code.’ It’s all about me trying to break the recipe for Giordano’s pizza.”

Once again, funny John has reared his head. The last big topic of conversation is Reilly’s involvement with Adult Swim sketch show, “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” Once again, he wears his passion for this topic on his sleeve.

“That stuff I’ve done with ‘Tim and Eric,’ with a certain age group, that’s the thing they mention, even more than “Step Brothers” and “Talladega Nights,” he says. “I think it has to do with a sense of discovery, that it’s not being packaged, it’s not being sold… there’s something exciting about how weird it is… I think in ten years people will look back at them like we did ten years after Monty Python. Like, ‘What the hell are these guys doing? It’s still weird ten years later it must have been insane then.'”

He goes on to say that he’s also planning on doing a movie with Tim and Eric, although he’s more reluctant to talk about his own sketch show, “Check It Out! With Dr. Steve Brule,” a spinoff of a character he played on “Tim and Eric.”

“I never talk about Steve Brule,” he says, “He’s a real person” (in fact, this isn’t the only time Reilly has dodged a question about Brule, he makes a point not to talk about the character in interviews.) When asked why he thinks his work on “Tim and Eric” has connected so much with young people, he says, “I was always someone who was more apt to treat younger people like an equal than like a superior.”

I definitely agree with Reilly’s statement; through our whole interview he has interacted causally, not doing the slightest thing to change who he is because of our age.

The interview with Reilly concludes by him telling us, “As an artist, you want to just stay relevant, you just want to be doing work that you find exciting and interesting, and hopefully if you’re doing that then people want to watch it.”

By this time I have decided that I like this guy. He’s talented, he wears his heart on his sleeve, and unlike some celebrities, he’s undoubtedly excited about his career and the projects he’s been involved with. As we’re leaving the interview, he drops some final knowledge on all of us, saying “Be cool, stay in school.” Did I mention that he was really funny too?