If the physical thing you're doing is funny, you don't have to act funny while doing it...Just be real and it will be funnier

Gene Wilder characters wanted to be calm, but to the great delight of audiences, they rarely succeeded.

Zero Mostel wasn't afraid of authority in any form, and that's the part that influenced me the most.

I met Mel [Brooks] backstage in Anne's [Bancroft] dressing room. He was wearing one of those pea coats, pea jackets that were made famous by the Merchant Marines, and I admired it and he said, "You know, they used to call this a urine jacket, but it didn't sell."

If the physical thing you're doing is funny, you don't have to act funny while doing it...Just be real and it will be funnier

Gene Wilder often said that his job as an actor wasn't to make something funny but to make it real.

So my idea of neurotic is spending too much time trying to correct a wrong. When I feel that I'm doing that, then I snap out of it.