Fred Willard
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"Frederic Willard" is an American actor, comedian, voice actor, and writer, best known for his improvisational comedy. He is known for his roles in the Rob Reiner mockumentary film This Is Spinal Tap, the Christopher Guest mockumentary films Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show (film)/Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, and For Your Consideration (film)/For Your Consideration, and the Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy/Anchorman films. He is an alumnus of The Second City. He received three Emmy nominations for his recurring role on the TV series Everybody Loves Raymond as Robert Barone's father-in-law, Hank MacDougall. In 2010, he received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for his role on the American Broadcasting Company/ABC TV series Modern Family as Phil Dunphy's father, Frank Dunphy.

He also received a Daytime Emmy Nomination for Outstanding Talk Show Host for What's Hot, What's Not.

One of his earliest jobs was at The Second City, Chicago, where he shared the stage with Robert Klein and David Steinberg.

He was a founding member of the improvisational comedy group Ace Trucking Company. Fellow members of Ace included Michael Mislove and Bill Saluga. They performed sketches on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson over 50 times and appeared regularly on This is Tom Jones.

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This Is Spinal Tap.

Cleveland is my hometown, and the Indians have a narrow but rich history.

I think my wife saw a picture of the rock group Journey, and they're kind of aging, and the one guy had dyed blonde hair with black roots, and... my idea was to get a little earring, I wanted to have a dangling earring.

In several TV shows I've done, I'm trying to think of what - just say something here, we need something funnier here.

Chris, listen to me, put down the gun and let the marching band go. We'll play it off as a prank.

In this last movie, I gave it quite a lot of thought to my character, and I fell back on a lot of managers and agents that I've had, and my early New York days where comics would sit around a table doing jokes and the managers would have jokes, and so I based it on a lot of that.

I have also always had a fascination with the St. Louis teams; the Cardinals for their Gashouse Gang and classic uniform logos, and of course the Browns for just being the Browns and for Pete Gray. You can also still stand on the site of the '44 World Series, although the parks department has seen fit to plant over the old diamond.

I think Dabney Coleman is quite baseball-savvy. So is Christopher Guest.

Someone I've always admired is Catherine O'Hara... I think she's one of the best actresses in the country, not only comedy. I just think she's just a step aside from everybody, she's just wonderful.