This article was originally published in the May 2005 issue of Esquire.
Never go for the punch line. There might be something funnier on the way.
It can make you sad to look at pictures from your youth. So there’s a trick to it. The trick is not to look at the later pictures.
Money is sensual. Every time I see Les Moonves, I get an erection. What can I tell you?
Being on a sitcom stops me from getting Alzheimer’s.
You’d be surprised what people will do. I was going in for a hip replacement—I’m on the gurney and they’re rolling me in—and all of a sudden this young hospital worker says, “Mr. Stiller, I do voice-overs. Can you get this to your agent?” And he gave me a tape, which I stuck between my legs as I went in for surgery. I thought to myself, This can’t be too serious an operation.
Hollywood never knew there was a Vietnam War until they made the movie.
We didn’t have the money for a Passover seder when I was a kid, so our family would show up at relatives’ homes unannounced. We were seder crashers.
During the Depression, my father took me to vaudeville. When we came home, we had no money. I remember my mother turning her pocketbook upside down. Not a penny. “Go out and hack!” she screamed at my father. “Nobody wants a cab,” he said. “They can’t afford it.” My mother kept at him, saying that we didn’t even have enough money to buy milk. As he headed for the door, he said to her, “You hate vaudeville.” And she said, “Maybe if I wasn’t with you, I’d like it.” I remembered that all my life, and I would use it onstage with [my wife] Anne. The difference is our audience would laugh at it.
When I told my father I wanted to be an actor, he said, “Why not a stagehand? You’ll work every night.”
François-Joseph Talma said that superior intelligence makes for middling acting and middling intelligence makes for superior acting. I live by that.
When they’re looking at your shoes, it means you’re not doin’ too good.
Don’t ever ask anyone for an opinion of your performance. They’re liable to tell you.
It’s silly to think that your entire existence depends upon other people’s feelings about you.
You’ll always know if I’m in the audience when Ben or our daughter, Amy, is performing. I’m the one laughing loudest.
I’m still waiting for the girls I loved as a teenager to call and say, “What a fool I was.”
Anne and I have been married almost fifty-two years now. What do I love most about her? She can forgive very easily.
Life can take you to funny places. I was doing Shakespeare not far from where I played softball as a kid. Here I was in a codpiece, playing Peter in Romeo and Juliet before an audience of Latinos. And a guy in the audience shouts out, “Give it to her, Pepito!”
It’s best to spend your money. You can’t take it with you. And if you try to pass it on to close friends or relatives, you may not be helping them. You may be hindering them. You know the old saw: Better to learn how to fish than to just eat the fish.
I was not the first father on Seinfeld. There was another father, whom I replaced. I was out of work at the time. My manager had retired. I was close to seventy years old and I had nowhere to go. I get this chance on Seinfeld. I hadn’t even seen the show. The idea was for Estelle Harris, who was the screamer, to be the boss lady of the Costanza family. And I was supposed to be her Thurberesque husband. The part called for me to wear a bald wig to look like George and to act very meek. But after a couple of days I realized that acting meek was going to get me fired just like the last guy. On the fourth day, I said to Larry David, “This ain’t workin’. Can I do it my way?” The scene started and Estelle began screaming at me, “You’re the one who ruined his life! You’re the one who wasn’t a good role model! You’re a lousy father!” Only this time I shot back, “You’re the one who made him sandwiches in bed! You’re the one who coddled him and treated him like a baby!” All the cameramen broke out laughing. Then Jason [Alexander] came over and said, “Don’t be afraid to hit me.” I said, “But you’re my son. You’re thirty-five years old! I can’t do that.” What the hell. The next time Jason said, “Dad, can I have the keys to the car ?” Bang! I gave him this whack. Everybody screamed. Then Estelle went over to Larry and said, “Can I hit him, too?”
I don’t know if the people have changed or if Jewish humor has changed the people.
It’s difficult to reach back to the people who gave you your first break because most of them are dead. So I try to be helpful to the newcomers. But please, don’t send me your screenplays.
When anxiety is not attended to, it’s time to start worrying.
My wife says, “Jerry loves to go through life suffering. Why should I take away his pleasure?”
