Bobby Farrelly (center) on the set of Me, Myself & Irene with actor Jim Carrey and brother Peter.

Although the Farrelly brothers are major players in Hollywood, they both call Massachusetts home. Bobby lives with his wife, two children, and a chocolate Lab in the seaside community of Duxbury. The brothers have managed to avoid movie-biz affectations often associated with big names and are widely regarded as “regular guys.”

“We honestly try to have as good a time as we can have,” Farrelly says.

Their fun-loving, relaxed attitudes, coupled with spectacular box-office success, have attracted some of the most-sought-after comic actors to their movies. But what differentiates their comedies, Farrelly says, is the casting of dramatic actors, including Jeff Daniels, Matt Dillon, and Laurence Fishburne.

“A skilled actor new to comedy challenges comic actors to do some real acting,” Farrelly has said. “When you put really good comedic actors like Ben Stiller and Chris Elliott against someone like Matt Dillon, they challenge each other in different directions.”

Their next project, Shallow Hal, stars Gwyneth Paltrow and Jack Black. Black plays Hal, a very shallow guy who chases after only the youngest, prettiest women. After he’s hypnotized into seeing women for their inner beauty, he meets an obese woman (played by a prosthetically enhanced Paltrow) and falls in love with her inner self.

Already, there’s a positive buzz surrounding the picture, which is set for a Nov. 9 release.

Twenty years ago, Farrelly—as well as his parents—could not have envisioned where his career path would lead.

“I feel like I’m doing what I am supposed to be doing in life,” Farrelly says. “When I was in college and right after, I had no idea, not one-one-thousandth of a percent, that I should go to Hollywood and write. It never occurred to me. But I kept my options open and I was willing to try a lot of different things. It was that kind of attitude that got me into the movie business,” he says.

“My parents had thrown their hands up, saying things like, ‘you guys just run around joking all day and you think you can make a living at that.’

“So now we say, ‘will you admit you were wrong?’”