JOHN RATZENBERGER

So many actors have sheer guts, will, and determination; they just need some preparation.

You've got to write for your audience.

To them, the real United States is just flyover country.

In fact, my son learned his first swear word from E.T. at age five. The way I look at it, E.T. stole a bit of my son's childhood.

In L.A., though, people get off busses calling themselves actors, so many are really not professionals.

Two days later I got a call that they wanted to try out the character for seven episodes. Eleven years and 22 Emmys later, Cliff was still sitting at that bar.

I started improvising the Cliff character, based on someone I grew up with.

You'll be tested every single day.

There are times over different projects when I've asked the writers why people are swearing for no good reason. I tell them that it would be funnier if there weren't these swear words.

Hollywood has lost touch with their audience a long time ago.

I've turned down projects based on raunchiness before.

Find people who share your values, and you'll conquer the world together.

So many people aren't ready for Hollywood - professionally or practically.

I always played a soldier, sailor, or policemen.

The pollution they produce, market, sell, and show to billions around the world is at its core contemptuous of the country that gave them better lives than nearly 100 percent of everybody who's ever lived. And they pass that contempt along for everyone to see.

Diabetes affects my family. One of my kids is affected by it.

They need to be re-supplied with energy, and that energy comes from asking not what your country can do for you, but from what you can do for your country.

It appalls me that the people who decide what Americans will be watching on the tube have never been to the United States. Not the real United States.

There are technologies you couldn't predict at all when I started.

From what I can see, too many kids don't learn pride in their country anymore.

After all, at end of the day, when you're breathing your last, it's not your producer, director, or cast mates by your bedside; it's your children. Keep that in mind.

I come from Bridgeport, Connecticut and have friends I grew up with there.

I'm concerned about the insidious influence of the media's bad messages that undermine the lessons parents try to instill in their sons and daughters.

But from what I can see all around me today, that America is fading fast, if it's not already gone.

A farce, or slapstick humor, does well universally.