Fred Melamed: In my career, I've had kind of a strange trajectory as a...

I have two young children with autism. What could they have ever done to deserve that? What kind of a God allows the innocent to suffer? It's a mystery. Yet still, I believe in God.

Fred Melamed

two believe children

Most of the time when I receive a script, it says something like 'Rosenberg is the fat, slovenly Mayor, who doesn't want the kids to use the Skateboard Park,' or 'Stein is a pompous, rotund attorney, imposing to all.' It would be so freeing to get a script where my character is simply described as 'A Man.'

Fred Melamed

character men kids

It probably goes without saying that I enjoy the potato pancakes, delicious hams and so forth that maddeningly turn up at this time of year.

Fred Melamed

ham pancakes years

The voice-over world has changed radically in the time that I've been in it. It used to be this rather small, select group of people who did 90 percent of the work. Now it's kind of the reverse: 90 percent of the work is done by this very broad mix of people all over the country, and the guys who used to be the go-to guys are a much smaller percentage now. But there was this massive interest in voice-over as well as in the story, so I think that also added to the film's appeal.

Fred Melamed

voice country thinking

Well, because I have twin seven-year-old boys, I enjoy the gift giving stuff a great deal. We do both Hanukkah and Christmas, so it is a costly, though extremely pleasing proposition.

Fred Melamed

christmas boys years

I'm one of relatively few stage-trained actors who doesn't much like acting on stage. It feels kind of like riding the Cyclone at Coney Island, which I did when I was eight. When it was all over, I was glad I had done it, but most of the time when it was actually happening, I was just kind of hanging on for dear life.

Fred Melamed

eight acting islands

I have a secret aspiration to be considered for a part where it doesn't matter what you look like to play it.

Fred Melamed

secret matter play

The word "hedonistic" to me means pleasure above all else. My pleasure above all else.

Fred Melamed

hedonistic pleasure mean

I always think of the character as being me. But me wearing a 'coat', which may be a different way of speaking, moving or regarding other people. To me, acting is pretending, just like kids playing, only you pretend as if it were really, really real.

Fred Melamed

real character moving

We must agree to live in this world, with all that is unfair about it, without knowing why, if we wish to have a God in our lives.

Fred Melamed

knowing agreement wish

I haven't appeared on stage in quite a long time and I don't have any immediate plans to do so, but I'm always interested in going back.

Fred Melamed

plans stage long

It's funny, but three of my early films were with Liam Neeson, before Liam Neeson was a big star.

Fred Melamed

film three stars

I am tolerably ignorant about Judaism, and much of what I do know about it seems hard to swallow, because it is so grounded in legalism, and adherence to rituals.

Fred Melamed

judaism adherence ignorant

I don't really know of the Jewish tradition of comedy, only the Jewish tradition of not keeping your mouth shut. Complaining about all that is hard, unfair or ridiculous in life-having strong feelings, and not being able to suppress them. That, to me, is Jewish.

Fred Melamed

keeping-your-mouth-shut jewish-tradition strong

Though I acted in hundreds of productions, appeared at the Guthrie Theatre and on Broadway in Amadeus, I discovered in my thirties that I didn't really like stage acting. The presence of the audience, the eight shows a week and the possibility of a long run were all unnatural to me.

Fred Melamed

eight running long

I'd always admired Diane Keaton, but I'd never met her.

Fred Melamed

mets

I've always thought that, in a sense, the more specific and sometimes even the smaller the world of a movie is, the more universal it is.

Fred Melamed

universal sometimes world

In general, I'm always interested in characters who have kind of extreme aspects to them, who are in some ways larger than typical people.

Fred Melamed

typical character people

I always did plays in school because I thought it was fun, but it just never occurred to me as a thing to do.

Fred Melamed

play fun school

I was always around people who were in the business from the time I was an absolute baby. I grew up in New York City, and my parents, my sister, and I had a house on Fire Island, and they were part of a set of people that were all close and friendly, most of whom were involved in show business in one regard or another. So it was always familiar to me, and I kind of enjoyed it.

Fred Melamed

new-york fire baby

In my career, I've had kind of a strange trajectory as an actor. I started out doing movies and theater and stuff, but then I had a terrible problem with stage fright as an actor on stage, and I quit stage acting for a long, long time.