Rarely has someone been so wildly famous, yet so stubbornly unknown.

Yes, Ricky Gervais created the British version of The Office and by extension a television comedy franchise that has spawned incarnations across the globe.

Yes, The Ricky Gervais Show still remains the most downloaded podcast in history. And true, he has had minor but memorable roles in such films as For Your Consideration, Night at the Museum and Stardust.

But for all the Emmys and accolades -- and despite being a bona-fide superstar in industry circles -- you will still hear the odd journalist openly asking colleagues how you pronounce his name. More daunting, in vast swatches of North America, they don't know his name at all.

"I think when people back home say I've broken America, they mean the five big cities -- east coast, west coast ... There's a big part in the middle that probably weren't into the English version of The Office," the 47-year-old Londoner says during a sit-down with Sun Media.

So there is much riding on the supernatural comedy Ghost Town, his first attempt at carrying a Hollywood production on his unlikely shoulders.

Opening Friday, it casts Gervais as a misanthropic dentist who, following a near-death experience during a colonoscopy, discovers he can, as Haley Joel Osment once whispered, "see dead people."

And as in The Sixth Sense, the only way Gervais can expunge himself of these unwelcome visitors is helping them complete unfinished business.

Chief among his ghostly visitors is Greg Kinnear as a philandering lawyer who wants Gervais to break up the pending marriage of his widow (Tea Leoni) to a crusading do-gooder (Billy Campbell).

"I've never aimed to be broad or big or more successful," Gervais insists. "I just aimed to do what I want and do better, really. There's no fun in getting bigger. The fun is the pursuit of excellence. Can I top The Office? Can I top Extras? What's the next thing? What haven't I done before?

"Those are the things that excite me. I'm always more proud of the awards than viewership. Popularity has never been equated with quality, really. In fact, sometimes the opposite is true. I think if you don't aim at going bigger, you don't water it down, you don't go too broad, you don't aim kids and idiots, then if you do get popular like The Office did, it's not your fault."

In addition to inaugurating him as a leading man, Ghost Town represents another first -- and possibly last -- for Gervais. Unlike every other project he has been involved with, this film doesn't bear a writing credit for the comedian.

The screenplay -- co-penned by director David Koepp (whose monster credits include Spider-Man and Jurassic Park) -- was already fully formed when it crossed Gervais' desk. That said, "I knew from the beginning I wasn't hired just as an actor. If a director just wants me to stand in place and say the lines, then every actor's better than me. I don't do that. So whenever I'm an actor for hire, I know they're hiring me for something else.

"So from the beginning David Koepp took my input. We worked on the script for two days, we changed stuff ... You see the ad libs all the way through. The script was fantastic when I read it, but if they had said, 'Stand here and say this' I wouldn't have taken the job and I wouldn't have gotten the job."

(And there are some things Gervais simply wouldn't do, Koepp reveals. "Ricky had a few rules: No nudity and also no kissing anyone because no one wants to see that.")

Says Ghost Town scribe John Kamps, "Trying to squeeze Ricky into a completely typical Hollywood tone would just not work. You need to let him be Ricky. We were fortunate to get him. I don't know if anyone else will get him because he just wants to do just his own stuff."

"If it's not my idea, it's 'No' until I'm persuaded otherwise," Gervais explains. "I take few jobs. Some actors want to work all the time so they take seven projects and five of them are poor. I don't have to do that. I can keep my batting average high."

The fact is, he has actually been declining offers to star in movies for nearly a decade.

"I got offered leads in films after the first episode of The Office came out -- ludicrous. I see it so often, these guys who jump too early. They get offered a film that 20 people have turned down and take it. It's advertised on the sides of buses for one week and goes straight to DVD and that's it. And it's like it didn't happen. It's actually slightly worse. It's worse to do a bad film than no film at all because it adds to your cache."

And worse because it diminishes what control you have over your career -- the very thing which Gervais values most.

"Even the podcast was to get more control. It took out the broadcaster. So I was everything. And you have to live and die by the sword. It could be terrible and there would be no one telling me whether it's good or bad. Power's a scary word, but it is there, but it's power equated to artistic freedom.

"I've always done exactly what I wanted. I've always known what I wanted out of life -- getting to do what I do. Out of how many hours possible in a day to be doing what you like. That could have been sitting on a park bench drinking wine, but it wasn't. It was being funny and all those things.

"If I decide sitting on a park bench drinking wine is my favourite thing, then I'll do that."

Sitcom was just another day at the office

As Ricky Gervais tells it, "I didn't set out to dominate the world. I set out to make my favourite sitcom."

Actually, he did both. The Office, which Gervais conceived with Stephen Merchant in 2001 for the BBC, now airs in 80 countries, including the U.S., of course, where Steve Carell plays Michael Scott, an Americanized reinvention of Gervais' venal, inept middle-manager David Brent.

Despite the Starbucks-scale franchising of his breakthrough series, though, Gervais says he still considers it "12 episodes and a special. I don't consider myself the creator of the American Office or the Russian Office. I am, but I don't think about it. I think, 'Wow, what a fun time Steve and I had recording and making it and it's done now.' I've never watched it again."

Recalling the origins of the show, he says it wasn't autobiographical as most people assume, given the series' faux-documentary format as well as the fact Gervais worked in an office himself for several years. In fact, he says it was weirdly the opposite.

"It's 'But for the grace of God, there go I.' That could have happened to me if I had made all the wrong decisions ... It's like a parallel universe. With David Brent, it's what would have happened if I had stayed in the office and tried to be the boss."

(He tackled his sophomore series Extras similarly, he says. "Andy Millman made all the other decisions I did. He went against his integrity. He took the awful comedy with catch-phrases and wigs. He went for fame as opposed to the work.")

And he selected the anonymous soul-sapping confines of a modern-day workplace as a backdrop not because it was what he knew, but because it was the one that required the least amount of exposition.

"It was nice to go into an environment that everyone knew because then I could go on to other things. If it was a sci-fi, I have to explain what's going on before you start enjoying the drama. If it's set in the past, you have to get the period right. So it was -- bang, this is an office, it's this year, it's people you've met before, now let's enjoy it."

That naturalistic approach was also reflected in the show's tone. He considers neither The Office nor Extras strictly comedies per se. In fact, he says, they probably have more in common with TV dramas.

"There were funny moments. But it went from sitcom and farce and always developed into drama because I think that's what happens in life. When you first meet someone, it's frivolous and happy and then you get to know them. You have jokes for a year and then their mom dies and that's when a friendship happens. If you're hanging out having a pint, you're buds. When something happens, you're friends. It's conflict and external forces changing your perspective."

Heady themes, he knows, compared to the stale rhythms of formulaic Hollywood sitcoms.

"I think they feel frivolous because it's supply and demand. There's this overwhelming quest to please everyone, which doesn't make sense at all. If you're pleasing everyone, you're not really pleasing anyone. The goal of something even as lowly as TV comedy is to make a connection, not a number of connections. When I was making it, I would always say I'd rather be a million people's favourite show than 10 million people's 19th favourite show."