104 Quotes by Fred Willard

I try to shy away from playing cranky people, but if it's just a funny next-door neighbor or business man, I'll say, 'Sure, why not?'

My first improv was Second City in Chicago. Before that, I worked at - with a partner, doing comedy sketches.

I like the characters that have some redeeming quality or if it's interesting to me in any way.

It scared me to death to think about improv, but I got hired for a year at Second City in Chicago, which made me nervous, but I found I could improvise. Then I was in a group called the Ace Trucking Company, which we'd do, like, a half hour set of material, then open up for improvisation.

The witch in 'Snow White' is a very scary image.

There's different kinds of improv. There's Second City improv where you try to slowly build a nice sketch. There's stuff you do in college coffee houses where you just go joke, joke, joke. Bring another funny character with a funny hat on his head. Christopher Guest is more the line of trying to get a story out.

Kids can relate to having some scary person living near their house. They can relate to, 'Hey, don't go near that house.' We all can.

That's always a funny thing, when people think they're known for every little thing they ever did, and they're really not.

If I have to play an obnoxious character, try to find a redeeming feature of him. The most obnoxious people in the world were people, and they had had a reason for doing what they did. So you try to find that and let the obnoxiousness come out.