Quotes

Life is supposed to get tough.

I lost a lot of stuff when Karen died. It took about a year to get back to even thinking that there might be a reason to go on.

I got fired when I was a dishwasher at Denny's. That set me back a little bit. You don't realize how important dishwashers are until you do the job.

[on his role as Tom Kane the brutal mayor of Chicago on Boss (2011)] He's an exciting character and a lot of fun to play. Iago is one of the most liked characters in Shakespeare's canon and he's the most evil, most extraordinarily manipulative person in history. He says the worst, most politically incorrect things, even for the time the play is set in - and yet audiences adore that character. There's some similarity there with Tom Kane. The discovery of this man has been a discovery of things I've never done or said before.

Actors are observers of human life, of human behavior. If you've any smarts and any powers of observation, you kind of know what's going on inside a person like Tom Kane, and you just bring it out naturally. It's part of who you are. That's what you're good at.

The cops in Chicago have told me that I have a withering look that is just like Mayor Daley's was. A lot of them come up and say, "Man, the way you do that thing, the way you turn that Fuck you look on people, that is him." I have not been a party to that look. I don't know it personally.

[on the scripts for Boss (2011)] I think it's great writing, great writing. Why would you mess around with that? If something doesn't quite roll off the tongue or I'm having trouble memorizing it, that's often an indication that something is missing, That's always been my barometer. But this has been easy, a lot easier than it looks actually.

[on if he was happy with the way Frasier (1993) ended] Oh yeah. Yeah, that was one instance where I knew the end of the show at the same time we did the first episode. My idea was always to embrace the idea that he's going off to the other world, using the poem of Ulysses. That was always part of it, and they were - happily - not against that idea.

[on how challenging the makeup process was in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)] It wasn't as bad as you'd think. We got the process down to an hour and a half for most of it, so it was only three hours total. So it wasn't brutal. It was just the prep. If I had to sit around in it for most of the day before we shot... well, that was just planning. That happened a couple of times, but I pissed and moaned enough to make sure it didn't happen more than once or twice. [laughs]

[on playing Stinky Pete the Prospector in Toy Story 2 (1999)] Stinky Pete! What a poor, repressed little shit. [laughs] I loved him, but he was... I liked how small his thinking was. You know, how inside the box he wanted to be. He was a very interesting little character to play. The thing I remember most, though, was [co-writer/director] John Lasseter. His enthusiasm for the work he does was just breathtaking. He would run out of the sound booth and go, "Oh, my God, I can't wait to go animate that line!". He loves performance and embraces it. He likes to... well, he's just like a child. He's wonderful.

[on playing Sideshow Bob on The Simpsons (1989)] An irrepressible villain. He is a presumptive joy to play on every occasion. Sam Simon had worked on Cheers (1982), so that's how I got involved in that. He just called one day and said, "Hey, Kels, I remember you used to sing a lot on the set of Cheers (1982). Can you do a Cole Porter tune?". I said, "Yeah, absolutely!". And that was the basis of the conversation. He said, "We've got this guy on the show, he's never said anything before, he's the sidekick character of Krusty the Clown," and once he ran it down, I said, "Sure, I'll play." They were kind enough to send the song over first - you probably already know, but it was "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" - but I said, "Yeah, I can sing it.".

[on if he has a favorite Sideshow Bob episode of The Simpsons (1989)] Well, I have a favorite Sideshow Bob line, which is [in character] "Lisa, you do not spend a decade as a homicidal maniac without learning a thing or two about dynamite." [laughs] And then there's the rakes. That's just a classic.

[on playing Dr. Frasier Crane on Cheers (1982) and his own spin-off, Frasier (1993)] The golden key. [laughs] When I first came onto Cheers (1982) , it was originally only going to be for seven shows. Apparently, I was funny enough to keep around. They said that to me quite openly. "He's funny enough to keep around. He makes things funny that we didn't think were funny, and that's an asset to the show." So they found a way to have him be part of it... You know, one of my favorite episodes of playing Frasier on Cheers (1982) was one I think was called The Triangle (1986), when he actually started to do therapy on Sam and Diane and sort of ended up examining himself in the process, and had the big blowout in Sam's office with the two of them. He sort of became his own man at that point, and I liked that. It was a good episode. And it was probably also when he realized he could have his own show. [laughs]

[on if there was any hesitation to do Frasier (1993)] Oh, I quite clearly thought he should die with Cheers (1982) . But then we broke another story with Casey-Angell-Lee [writer-producers Peter Casey, David Angell and David Lee], and they wrote a great script about a completely different character. And it was [Paramount TV head] John Pike who was responsible for Frasier. He's the one who sat me down and said, "I think a sitcom should be funny, and the script you guys turned in is not." [laughs] "I want you to do Frasier." So I said, "Okay, well, there's a couple of conditions: he's not married, and I don't want any kids in there." So we found the devices to get as far away from Boston as we could, and people made an attempt to make sure this was a new guy with an old but recognizable name. But he was still the centerpiece of the show, so we got David [Hyde Pierce] to be the Frasier of the show, and we were able to let Frasier be someone a little bit different.

[on playing Dr. Henry "Hank" McCoy/Beast in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)] The first thing that comes to my mind, honestly, is that we didn't do more. I'd love to play him again. He's such a great character. I'm glad they brought him in for that one, but it's a shame we didn't get to see more of Hank. Then they moved to the prequel and everybody got young. [laughs] But it's all right... I hadn't followed X-Men so much, but when I played the role, I got so much response from people about how excited they were. I think there was just a gap in the market. I think we missed a real chance there to give the ones who loved Hank a bit more of him.

[about working on Frasier (1993)] "I'm very unprofessional and there are several episodes in which you can catch me laughing. The one about the Hungarian goose - 'It's not my date, it's dinner!' - I could never get through that. The one where they open up the restaurant together. The one with the supermodel zoologist where I go, 'What do you think of me now?' Honestly, it was just a lovely time. The happiest 11 years of my life."

[2023, on his late 'Cheers' co-star Kirstie Alley] I loved Kirstie. She was always beautiful. She just had that thing about her. She was a radiant human being and that came through her. She knew how to love. She was so honest in her emotions all the time.

[on Hollywood's backlash to Sydney Sweeney's jeans ad] Oh they don't hate her, they don't know who she is, they just hate. This is their power base, their power is hatred, unfortunately hatred destroys yourself. I was raised as a Christian Scientist, there's a saying in the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy who started that church in the mid 1800s. The saying is 'If I wish to harm my enemy, I would make him hate someone'. And that to me is the trick, these guys are up against the wall because their hatred is so palpable and they're so dedicated to it, it will burn them out, and they will end up destroyed in their own contempt. And it's a sad, sad thing, I don't like to see anybody go that way, but there it is.

[about the abortion of his unborn son] I regret it... I know that many people do not have a problem with abortion, and though I have supported it in the past, the abortion of my son eats away at my soul.

[about American education] If you don't know where you come from, you don't know who you are. If you don't know who you are, you can be controlled.