On June 20, Mike Myers returns to the big screen as his newest original character, the romantic spiritual insider Pitka in Paramount Picture’s "The Love Guru," co-starring Jessica Alba, Romany Malco, Justin Timberlake and Verne Troyer.

Last month, Myers and Alba participated in a conference call for college media while promoting the film at ShoWest in Las Vegas.

During his beginnings on Saturday Night Live, Myers created several original characters for the sketch comedy show: Streisand-idolizing Linda Richman; German expressionist filmmaker Dieter; and metal head Wayne Campbell. Following his stint there, he went on to create Austin Powers, a randy British superspy that spawned three films.

Pitka is his first original character since Austin Powers and the three "Shrek" films. But creating a character and immersing himself into the role is nothing new to Myers.

"The immersing in my character comes from my hero growing up and my dad’s hero growing up—Peter Sellers," Myers said. "And if there’s anybody that I have a career that’s most like, it’s Peter Sellers or even Alec Guinness. Those two guys are definitely my heroes. My art form is immersion. So this is no different than anything else that I’ve done."

"The Love Guru" centers on Pitka being hired by the Toronto Maple Leafs to help their star-player get out of his professional funk by reuniting him with his estranged wife, believing the reunion will propel the team to a Stanley Cup.

Myers also commented that he doesn’t just crank out movies off an assembly line.
"I don’t make a lot of movies," Myers said. "I take a long time, sometimes three-and-a-half-years because they’re handmade. I workshop and immerse and see what happens at the end of it."

Comedy is nothing new to Alba either; her humble, career starts came in the form of "Never Been Kissed" and Idle Hands." It hasn’t been until recently that Alba returned to the genre after comic book movies ("Sin City," "The Eye") and mediocre pop dramas ("Into the Blue," "Honey") in last year’s "Good Luck Chuck."

"I wanted to do comedy, but no one would give me a shot at it." Alba said. "I couldn’t even get into rooms to audition for comedies because everyone thought I was too tough or played superheroes and I wouldn’t be able to do comedy and you know have fun and be playful."

"’Good Luck Chuck’ was my shot of showing people that I could do it," Alba added. "[Comedy] is my favorite thing in the world to do. Then, Mike asked me to be in this movie, and that’s how it went down."

One reason Alba is attracted to comedic work is the challenge to make someone laugh.

"Comedies are really challenging," Alba said. "I think it’s the toughest job to tackle because when people go to see a comedy and expect at least one moment where they are holding their stomach’s hurting from laughing so hard or tears down their face. It’s hard to insure that’s going to happen."

Part of that challenge lies in working with a comedy veteran like Myers.

"With Mike, he is a veteran and I wanted to hold my own and keep up with him when I was improvising, to make sure that I stayed quick on my feet and witty and in-character," Alba said.

Myers created the character Pitka following a soul-searching journey following the death of his father.

"My father died in 1991 and I went on a spiritual quest," Myers said. "I started to become very interested in a lot of philosophies, but Eastern philosophy especially."

"It’s a very interesting world, the world of spirituality because often these people have no sense of humor what so ever," Myers added. "What I love about those [philosophers] is they understood to be enlightened is to, in fact, lighten up."

Myers’ father had a similar philosophy that helped inspire this film. "That laughing and finding something funny, which was always my father’s philosophy," Myers said. "Nothing is too bad that it can’t be laughed at."

His movies, though, come from his total and utter commitment to a performance.

"I think people work very, very hard during the day, and I think movie tickets are unbelievably expensive," Myers said. "If you put down the money for the ticket plus popcorn plus diet Coke plus Goobers plus baby-sitter plus whatever, you’re going to hope that the dude that’s on the screen is at least 100, 150 percent committed to what they’re doing. I believe in total commitment; it’s about trying to make every aspect of the film as funny and as cool as it can be because you only live once.

"When I’m 80, I want to look back and know that I made stuff that made people laugh because that’s the greatest joy I know: to write something and have a room full of people laugh at it."