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Bryan Callen sure was able to make a brief fling with Carrie Bradshaw go a long way.

He says he still gets recognized from his appearance on a 2003 episode of "Sex and the City," as an overzealous lover who turns sex into a hydraulic experience.

"There's an episode called 'The Catch,'" says Callen, who plays the Pittsburgh Improv from Friday through Sunday. "I'm the catch. I'm the guy who seems like a great guy, and she refers to it as 'jackrabbit sex.' I give her what can be described as a sex sprain. She ends up breaking up with me."

Callen also has snagged roles in "Frasier," "Entourage" and "How I Met Your Mother."

"I always thought I'd play leading men, but as I get older, my nose gets bigger and my face gets more oblong," says Callen, 41. "I'm morphing into character-actor guy."

He also has appeared on "MadTV" and the HBO prison drama "Oz." The son of a father who was in the Marines, he spent his childhood in Pakistan, Lebanon, India and Greece.

"I was always on the outside looking in," he says. "I was always a foreigner, and I've always felt this way. It's probably why I'm a comic. That's probably why people come to see me. I've got a different point of view.

"I would move to a completely different continent, and I had to make friends right away," he says, "and the best way was to make people laugh. I said, 'Look, guys, I'm a monkey.'"

Despite his long acting resume, Callen became a comic to hedge his bets, after having "a really honest conversation with myself" about his abilities as an actor.

He says his girlfriend at the time, Patty Jenkins (director of the 2003 film "Monster"), saw him making a speech at a wedding and suggested he do stand-up.

"I wrote a monologue about penguins, about what it's like to be a legless, flightless bird at the South Pole, and it went over very well," he says.

He also has a part in "The Hangover," a 2009 film starring Heather Graham.

What can audiences at the Pittsburgh Improv expect?

"A man who talks about who he wishes he was versus who he really is," he says. "I touch on male vanity and male insecurity and how I'd like to kill somebody with a sword and how I wish capes were still in style."

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