Wallace Shawn
Wallace Shawn
Wallace Michael Shawnis an American actor, voice actor, playwright, essayist and comedian. He is best known for appearing in film roles, such as Wally Shawn in the Louis Malle-directed comedy-drama My Dinner with Andre, Vizzini in The Princess Bride, Ezra in The Haunted Mansion, providing the voice of Rex in the Toy Story franchise, providing the voice of Gilbert Huph in The Incredibles, and providing the voice of Calico in Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. He also...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth12 November 1943
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
My plays have been strange from the beginning, and they never got unstrange.
In terms of number of movies, I've been in an extraordinary amount. If you count only the minutes I'm onscreen, it's not so long.
I'm being mocked because I don't live up to a socially determined view of what other people think a person should look like.
I am recognized a lot for Clueless, but I am recognized a great deal for The Princess Bride. I dont know... maybe everybody who has seen that movie just goes out on the street.
I choose parts because I don't want to be embarrassed when the movie comes out. What if my friends were to see the movie? What if my niece or nephew wandered into the theater and saw the movie? I don't want to be too ashamed of it.
In an amusement park, you can go on a roller coaster that carries you up and down, or you can go on another kind of ride that whirls you around in a circle. Similarly, there are different sorts of entertaining experiences in the theater.
It is hard enough to make a plan for how you are going to spend an evening with somebody else. So to make a plan for how you are going to behave in 25 years seems based on a view of life that is incomprehensible to me.
My style as a human being is to indulge people who need to escape, yet I insist on confronting them as a playwright. It's quite embarrassing, it's quite unpleasant, it's quite awkward.
From being a writer of plays, it was not that surprising that somebody thought of giving me a job as an actor. After I played one part, others came along.
But because we've all been readers, we know what the experience is like, and we hope that what certain writers have given to us, we will give to someone.
I love going to plays. There's a subconscious side to it, obviously-some people like to be spanked for XYZ psychological reasons, and I like to go to plays, and I can't entirely explain why.
Interestingly, the actress who, in her own persona, may be gentle, shy, and socially awkward, someone whose hand trembles when pouring a cup of tea for a visiting friend, can convincingly portray an elegant, cruel aristocrat tossing off malicious epigrams in an eighteenth-century chocolate house.
I probably have a higher opinion of my writing than the average person, at least when I'm in a good mood, but I don't really think of my plays as only being relevant to a particular month or year.
I don't happen to have a sense of humor personally, so I don't know what's funny about a character... This happens to be a feature of my life generally.