Ted Danson

To do something funny, you have to have experienced it in real life and digested it in a way that amuses you.

I think the struggle, whenever you make a film or television movie based on a real person's life, is finding a dramatic arc that will hold an audience's attention.

I eat less, stretch, and work out.

I was at our beautiful home in Martha's Vineyard, near Boston, sitting on the porch looking at the ocean when I got a phone called and was asked, 'Would I like to do 'CSI'?' A week later, I'm at a coroner's office in Las Vegas, participating in a quadruple autopsy.

I am so grateful that I accepted the offer to do 'CSI,' but it was like being shot out of a cannon, and it was so different from anything that I have ever done.

My reward in life for growing up a little bit was that Mary Steenburgen came into my life, and we have been together for 19 years.

My temperament is not the adventuresome sort that enjoys starting new projects every six months. I love ensemble, nine-to-five stability. There's a family dynamic in making a television show that you don't get on a movie, where you're a hired gun for a few months.

When you have brothers, you learn to be fiercely competitive with someone you love so they won't kill you and you won't kill them.

Everything I am, everything I've been allowed to do, career-wise, has come out of the opportunity I had with 'Cheers'. I think it's one of the funniest shows ever. They are some of my best friends.

Humor can bring people under the tent. And a good joke can deflect some of the intensity surrounding a serious subject.

I'm almost tempted, when I'm playing a real person, not to meet them. Afterwards, maybe. But, the job is the same. You still have to show up on screen and be alive and real and all that stuff.

You reach a certain age, and you realize, 'Wow: there are younger people doing this better than I can, and don't leave me out - I don't want to be left behind. I want to do it, too. Where are you going? I want to be part of it.'

Most of us can now record a whole series with the click of a button. We all have DVD players, and the rise of the DVD box-set means we watch this stuff in two, three-hour sessions. So there is this real appetite out there for lengthy, pretty intricate drama. All that is great news for writers.

You have to be an optimist, right? You have to be critical, then you have to be an optimist. Or else you're really stupid.

I think there are probably a handful of real character actors in this business. The rest of us are recycling. So now I'm Sam Malone the editor. I'm Sam Malone the billionaire.

I'm at the right age to work with dead people, but you have to be smart to be a CSI.

'Cheers' was great. They paired me up with Shelley Long on this tiny bar set for the final audition. That was my first really big one, and we just clicked instantly - I still think I got the part because of Shelley.

I've never been that guy who says, 'Ooh, I have to play King Lear'. First off, that'd be a disaster anyway. I tend to read something and see who's involved, and then know I want to be part of it. But I don't think I'm through with comedy. I still love to make people laugh.

I got my first television at Stanford when I was 20, and I used to watch 'The Dick Van Dyke Show'. He played my father on 'Becker,' and he's still one of my heroes. Along with John Cleese, he's my favourite physical comedian.

I was three. My father in jest said that he'd tell the doctor to give me a shot if I didn't behave. Good heavens, I have a mental picture of the living room and the doctor approaching the door. I was terrified.

I first saw the ocean as a kid. We would drive from Arizona in the summer and arrive as the sun was starting to come down over the hill near Laguna in southern California. We would always sing a song, and it was a big joyous family moment when we came over the hill.

To be successful, you have to be willing to be successful. You have to believe in the law of attraction - that you create your own life.

You should always carry string, according to my archaeologist father, because then you could at least make a trap to catch animals to survive. According to my grandmother, it was clean underwear.

My most annoying habit is complaining about my aches and pains. It's the new ones that I haven't identified yet that make me nervous. According to my wife, I complain way too much. I may be a borderline hypochondriac, or you could say I am fascinated by the body - at least by mine.

My father went to work every day, and it's my job to go to work, too. Some days will be good, some won't be so good, but I have to go to work.

I don't think I'm as educated as Whoopi, so I'm lifting myself to her level. But you know, our view of the world, our view of what we can do, our sense of what it means to be here, are similar.

I feel like I enjoy the company of Whoopi deeply, and my private life is my private life.

I am a bit of a Pollyanna - I spend most of my day happy.

To grow up knowing you're loved is astounding. It's a huge gift to a child.

My day goes from one embarrassing moment to the next.

The industrial way we fish for seafood is harming the marine habitats that all ocean life depends upon. Indiscriminate commercial fishing practices that include miles of driftnets, long lines with thousands of lethal hooks and bottom trawls are ruining ocean ecosystems by killing non-seafood species, including sea turtles and marine mammals.

I became interested in ocean issues in the 1980s when I couldn't take my daughters swimming because of pollution at our local beach. Twenty-five years later, I'm a board member of Oceana, the world's largest international organization dedicated to ocean conservation.

Looking out at the ocean, it's easy to feel small - and to imagine all your troubles, suddenly insignificant, slipping away. Earth's seven oceans seem vast and impenetrable, but a closer look tells another story.

My job playing Sam Malone was to let the audience in, to love my bar full of people. And that informed my life.

I'm from L.A. I'm an actor. I'm a flake.

I used to have a little silent prayer: 'Dear God, let my ability to get work be the same as my celebrity.' That would be a hard burden: to be a household name and not be able to get work.

I moved into this neighborhood, and I was walking on this beach with my kids, and we came across a sign that said, 'Water's polluted, no swimming.' And I didn't have any answers.

California is responsible for selling, trading and distributing large amounts of shark fins that come from all over the world.

I think it's the actor's job - when you think of being typecast or getting out of the shadow of whatever you've had success in - it's up to you as an actor. The industry will always want to hire you for what you were successful in last and what made money. But you can say no to that and look for other parts.

Many people continue to think of sharks as man-eating beasts. Sharks are enormously powerful and wild creatures, but you're more likely to be killed by your kitchen toaster than a shark!

I tell you, the difference for me is between being victimized, terrorized, numbed by reading about different disasters, or reducing the anxiety by getting up and doing something about it, at whatever level.

You use and lose a lot of energy being grumpy.

When people are in the midst of really heavy stuff and still have a sense of humor, I admire that.

One of the hardest things for me to do is watch myself. The first time I see it, I am obsessed with my left ear or my right ear or some other physical attribute, or the fact that I'm 60 or whatever shallow ego thought is running through my head. I'm just destroyed that I'm not Cary Grant or whatever.

My joints hurt. I'm slower. But I remember what it was like to run and play with the boys. I want to be one of the boys.

Usually if you're the center of a show, part of your job is to host its energy.

A friend is someone who will allow me to be a really bad friend and not hold it against me.

Sharks are in real trouble, and they need all the help they can get.

I'm basically a know-it-all, and I'm writing a book about it. I want it to be called 'Danson on Water' and have me on the cover in this Christlike pose, standing on the water.

Cloning, wow. Who would have thought? There should be a list of people who can and cannot clone themselves.