Between television, movies and Broadway throughout well over three decades, actor/comedian Richard Kind has thus far played nearly 300 roles, and while he’s frequently seen in supportive contexts, is nonetheless a fixture of multiple generations.

Some know him from appearing in all 145 episodes of the smash sitcom “Spin City,” others from cameos in such pop culture classics as “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Argo,” plus perhaps being the voice of several Pixar blockbusters or going on back to honing his craft right here at The Second City.

He’ll be coming close to where it all started at the Genesee Theatre in Waukegan on Friday, January 31 for “How Not To Be Famous: A Conversation With Richard Kind,” which as the journeyman performer promises, will feature as many behind the scenes stories as he can manage within a moderated interview, followed by a chance for the audience to ask the questions.

Tell us a bit about your connections to Chicago.

Richard Kind: It’s my second home. I still think of it as my home. I love Chicago. I graduated from Northwestern University, so that was something. I came there, actually, for a group called The Practical Theatre Company. I was there for a couple of months before I joined Second City and that was wonderful. I still have so many friends who were from Chicago. One reason why it’s so dear to me is because I call them “civilians.” None of them are in showbiz and my time with them sort of brings me down to earth a little.

How did studying at The Second City help lay your foundation?

Kind: I’ll tell you something, jokingly as they say, it’s the Harvard of comedy. It really was the Harvard of my acting, because at Second City, you don’t always do funny sketches. You try and do sketches that are real, and hit your funny bone, so you don’t always try to be “ha, ha funny” with a joke. The audience is like a director sometimes. It tells you when they believe you, when they doubt you, when you’re lying, when you’re not good, when they don’t like you and you get a feel of who you are. It was every night, except for Mondays, for four-and-a-half-years. You gotta be an idiot not to know who you are [after that].

What do you have planned for the Genesee Theatre when you return to town?

Kind: I’m doing a Q&A, I guess you could say about my career. I teach class a lot of times and the things that I teach during those classes, sometimes it’s for students of theater and sometimes it’s very elemental, like what does an actor do? What is it like? What is the difference between a movie and a TV show? Why does it take a month, two months, six months to shoot a movie? During the course of talking about me, I talk about the show business in terms of what I think is interesting, what’s fun. I dispel a lot of myths about acting and about showbiz. I use myself as an example of, really, what a journeyman actor is. Everybody knows the big stars, but the majority of show business is not big stars…

Some people make a lot a lot of money. Some people don’t make so much money, but you work. Some lawyers are tremendously successful. Some lawyers make a good living. There are different gradations and I’m a journeyman actor. That’s what I do. My thing is called “How Not To Be Famous.” It really should be called “How Not To Be A Star” because I have a modicum of fame. Not everybody knows me, but people think that if you’re an actor, you’re a star. I am by no means a star. There’s about ten to twenty stars in Hollywood, people who can go out and get a picture made. I’m the parsley on the plate of potatoes. I help make a dinner look good, be good, but it’s not on my shoulders. When you go to the restaurant, you don’t order a meal because it has asparagus. You order a steak. I’m the asparagus.

Beyond your many recurring and guest roles, I believe you appeared on every single episode of “Spin City.” What comes to mind when you look back on that sitcom?

Kind: That one I was in every episode. That’s a great show. My feelings about that is I was playing tennis with better tennis players than I was and they made me good because I had to work up to them. When you play with a better tennis player, you tend to play better. That’s what “Spin City” was like to me, from Michael [J. Fox], to Barry Bostwick, to Alan Ruck. They were great.

What was it like switching gears from an entirely scripted show to the improvisational nature of “Curb Your Enthusiasm”?

Kind: They’re very different and a movie is very different. This is the interesting stuff. A four camera sitcom is rehearsed all week long, and Friday night becomes opening and closing night. You have one night to do it, so if you have a stomach ache, it doesn’t matter, sorry. You do a movie or a single camera show, like an “NYPD Blue” or “Law & Order,” those take eight days to do, so you do various scenes and you maybe work two or three days a week. Then a show like “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” you don’t have to study your lines. You get the script, a short story. They say, “this scene” and you improvise. It’s like taking an O. Henry short story and you improvise it, so they’re three very different animals. They are as different as doing a movie is from doing a play.

How did you get involved in voicing so many of the Pixar films?

Kind: Alright, you want to hear my little thing about what happened with Pixar? My character in “Spin City” was Paul Lassiter. The man who ran Pixar, who created it, was a man named John Lasseter. His son’s name and his father’s name was Paul Lasseter, so right there, I was brought to the attention of John Lasseter. So that’s one [way] to get your foot in the door, [but] you gotta deliver. He knew who I was. He would watch “Spin City,” he liked me and he hired me for “A Bug’s Life.” Once I did “A Bug’s Life” and made my presence known at Pixar, I did six more and I was supposed to do seven. I was supposed to be in “Monsters Inc.,” but they were afraid that my voice was too similar to Billy Crystal’s, so they went with another actor…

You’ve appeared in a ton of other programs, films and plays. What are a few that stand out?

Kind: I think “A Serious Man” is a masterpiece. I think that the movie “Inside Out” is a masterpiece. I think “Argo” was a movie that I was very proud to be part of. It’s enough that it won “Best Picture” [at the 85th Academy Awards], but I think my scene working with Alan Arkin and Ben [Affleck], I was very lucky to do that. Let’s see, I had sort of iconic TV shows like “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” but then I did wonderful shows that people don’t remember or may not have even seen.

A show called “Luck” was wonderful. A show called “Red Oaks” was wonderful that I recommend everybody see. You can watch it for free on Amazon Prime. And then I did great plays. I did a musical in Chicago, an original Stephen Sondheim musical [called “Road Show”]. I created the role [of Addison Mizner]. What a dream!

Where does Broadway and performing live on stage fit into the puzzle?

Kind: I think if you take a look at one of the great actresses, who was a Chicagoan, Laurie Metcalf, she does a play a year. She makes sure she gets back to the stage and I follow her lead. I do a play a year. This year I did two plays. This year I did “Bye Bye Birdie” at The Kennedy Center and I just closed a play with John Mulaney and Fred Armisen called “All In.”

When you do a TV show, it is your job to come to work with the lines memorized. If you’re really good at acting, well, that’s great. If you’re just okay, it’s fine too as long as you get the words out. In a play, your job is to be great and you have two, to three, to four weeks to learn the lines, so it’s not about learning lines. Lines are easy. It’s about being great as an actor. Working on it every day, becoming better, finding out what the character is, that’s what’s great. To be honest, I like rehearsal better than I like performance because you really get to work to get into the character. Once you start performing, you’re doing the play every night. Of course you learn performance after performance, but I don’t want to do anything longer than six to eight weeks. Then it becomes so repetitive.

The unfortunate thing is that unlike London, like [West End], the State does not support theater. Theater becomes an independent thing and you can only make a finite amount of money doing theater, whereas with TV or movies, the number of viewers are infinite. You get millions and millions. Back when Bill Cosby’s show was on the air, they say that in one week, one episode, more people saw “The Cosby Show” than saw every Shakespeare show ever done since he lived. Isn’t that amazing? It’s unreal.

As you prepare for this conversation, what do you hope fans and fellow actors will take away from it?

Kind: I hope they’re entertained and I truly mean that. I tell stories. I don’t do stand-up. I don’t do jokes, but I think that I’m a lot of fun to listen to. Along the way, they might learn something. They’ll either learn something about me or they’ll learn something about the business I’ve chosen, what it’s like to be an actor. We sort of know what it’s like to be an accountant. We sort of know what it’s like to be a lawyer…As an actor, I can tell you what my days are like and they’re not what you think…

I think the best thing that I could tell any actor is that your career is a long war filled with battles. If you are cursed by achieving fame too soon because of your good looks, that battle is won mightily and is over two, or three, or four [years later]. What happens to the war? You disappear, but an actor worth his salt, he sustains in the war for years, and years, and years and has a career.

Is it moderated or can the public ask you questions directly?

Kind: A mixture of both. The first 40 minutes will be moderated. They’ll ask questions, and then from there, I just go out and get questions from the audience. It’s very much like Carol Burnett with her [ongoing tour]. I like to think that it’s like that. It’s a dialogue with the audience. It’s fun.

What do people typically ask you about and do you ever get any curveballs?

Kind: They always ask me about [longtime friend] George Clooney and I will only go so far into questions about him. He gets enough publicity…Any curveballs? No…I jokingly say if anybody wants to buy me an open face turkey sandwich at a diner, I’ll be happy to sit down and tell them all the stories they want. It’s a conversation at a diner, but they’re all in chairs and I’m up on stage, and I’m doing all the talking. However at a diner, I do all the talking too!

---

Richard Kind appears at the Genesee Theatre on Friday, January 31. For additional details, visit GeneseeTheatre.com.