George Gaynes

“It's nice to be in demand.”

“I brought what I could of myself to this thing, because between Henry Warnimont and I - not a hell of a lot of difference.”

“To build a character like Henry Warnimont required a few weeks and months of work. It turned out he was basically a very kind and generous man, which he covered up with his surface gruffness and surface bluster. And the kind of hopeless quality, that 'everything goes wrong' kind of thing.”

“I was an acting opera singer, and that's one of the reasons I left opera.”

“The two things an actor dreads most are children and dogs.”

“It should be easier to play opposite my wife.”

“For years, they cast me in these dumb straight roles of businessmen in three-piece suits.”

“My parents separated soon after I was born, so I left Helsinki when I was a year old. My mother took me to Paris and then other places throughout Western Europe.”

“It depends on the generation and gender. The males usually go for 'Police Academy,' and the young women now in their late 20s or so go for 'Punky Brewster.' I am recognized quite frequently because they're still playing that stuff on television!”

“I'm not foreign enough to play foreigners... I have sort of a mid-Atlantic British accent that puts me in the middle of everything, so they don't know quite where to put me.”