I played a lot of leaders, autocratic sorts; perhaps it was my Canadian accent.
I had to weave and play around with a honey bear, you know, and I could wrestle with him a little bit, but there's no way you can even wrestle a honey bear, let alone a grizzly bear that's standing ten feet to eleven feet tall! Can you imagine? But it was fascinating to work that close to that kind of animal.
The violence or the vaudeville style of comedy is a technique all by itself. You get up there, and you are a comedian, and you're doing one thing. That is, you're going to make the audience laugh.
I've produced, but as for directing, that's a dream that'll have to go unfulfilled.
Shirley! Don't call me Shirley!
To be honest, I never, ever thought I'd ever do comedy. I was so frequently cast early on as a high-born young man with... 'problems' and, later, as a heavy, from black-hatted western villains to the corporate raider to bad cops.