I was a top-notch cartoon model for Hanna Barbera, and they made me into a cartoon series called 'Devlin,' which ran for seven years, and I was on lunch pails and coloring books and all of that. It's really interesting being a coloring book when you're young - most kids colored in coloring books, but I made money off coloring books.
I am getting to that age where I am too old to play the boy next door and too young to play Uncle Fester.
Our family business was operating batting cages. The pitching machine spit out the balls at lightning speed. Don Drysdale, Sandy Koufax. Whitey Ford. 50 cents for 12 pitches. Of course, my mother ran the place, and I was her slave: selling candy, hosing down the street, and the most dreaded of all jobs, feeding the pitching machine with balls.
Younger audiences are into me because I did 'Stuart Little,' and that movie was a very big deal for kids. And in 'Angels in the Outfield,' a generation of kids learned about magic and angels. And then, of course, there are these two blond girls named Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, and I played their nanny on their TV show.
I paint. I still do it every day. I never neglected it. It's a gift. It's almost like religion for me. It's the quickest way for me to become still.
I've always loved silent movies. I recently saw 'Tilly's Punctured Romance' at the Academy, which is the first comedy made with Charlie Chaplin in 1914, and I sat there, and I couldn't believe that the entire audience of 2,000 people were laughing that hard from a movie made in 1914 - and there were no words; it was all faces.
I personally won't have anything live in my house that can't move the car on street-sweeping day or grate carrots. Plus, I don't mind being talked to harshly. I want to be challenged by something more complex than a Wheaton terrier.
