Emma Freud: John, unusually for an American, you began life as an English person. Where was that exactly?

JM: Actually I was born in 1940 in Blackpool because my family lived in Manchester but Manchester was being bombed. So my mother was sent away to Blackpool to have me and then went back; so I lived my first eighteen years in Manchester and then emigrated to the States when I was eighteen.

EF: And what was Manchester like when you were growing up?

JM: Well it was one of the reasons I emigrated to the States. It was post war. It was very gray, very dreary. Everything was still rationed when I first saw the United States in 1951. I went over to visit my sister who was a war bride. My mother would clip out the little two ounce coupon from the ration book for us to get our candy when we'd go to the Saturday matinee. And everything was rationed. everything was rubble, everything was bleak, everything was dreary. And then I went to visit my sister in the states and all of a sudden it was just like, it's like... it's like the movie Wizard of Oz when all of a sudden it changes from Black and White to glorious Technicolor. It was just amazing, you know, all of a sudden I'm.... just super abundance of everything....tasting things, seeing things Id never even seen before; tasting chicken for the first time, seeing a banana for the first time. It was an amazing revelation to me, and I just decided that that was where I wanted to live. So I emigrated there when I was nineteen.

EF: You're not meant to say things like that when you're in England.....

JM: I know.... No no no!! I love it here! I come back every year and I still have family here. I can certainly see myself retiring here but career wise, it behooves me to stay in the states.

EF: "Behooves"!!

EF: Aside from his 37 movie credits, if you watch the great sitcom Frasier you'll know John Mahoney in his current role as Martin Crane, Frasier's father. If you don't watch the great American sitcom Frasier youre making a TERRIBLE mistake!! Ummmm, We've heard a little bit about your childhood, John, this amazing moment when you left England and went to America. You kind of reinvented yourself when you arrived in America, didn't you?

JM: yeah.. you could say that... Once I got there. People say there's no trace of an accent anymore, and there isn't because I worked very hard to lose it. And the reason I did that is a British accent in America is a real status symbol. It doesn't matter whether you come from Bradford or whether you come from Liverpool or whether you come from London or.... It doesn't matter. All they have to hear is that British accent and they immediately think that you're brilliant beyond belief.... and talented beyond compare...

EF: Can you still do it?

JM: I can still.... it takes me little while...... I might do something for you a little later. But when I first got to America, I thought..... I'll compare it....... If I were to fall in love with a French woman, or if I had gone to Germany or something like that, I would have wanted to speak either the best French that was possible or the best German that was possible. I would have wanted to have sounded like a native. And that's what I did when I went to the United States. I didn't want my whole life - people saying to me: "How do you say banana?? Again...." or "Oh, I love that accent..." and just singling me out. I didn't want that. I knew I was going to live there and I....

EF: Did you listen.....

JM: Yes! yes, I would ask people (I was in the army for three years when I first got to the states). And I'd say: "how do you say this word," and I'd say it. And how do you say that.... and Id actually write it down phonetically, and Id drill myself. So by the time I'd been in America three years, I sounded pretty much like I sound now. It was just gone, and that's they way I wanted it. I was going to be living there and I didn't want to sound like a foreigner all my life.

EF: Do you still feel British, secretly??

JM: yes, yes.... I come here every year, or every other year, at least. I still have family here. I still harbor a dream of retiring here. You can take the boy out of England, but you can't take England out of the boy. And ummm, yes, I feel a huge emotional attachment to England.

EF: You worked in a large number of jobs in America, when you....after you left the army. At the age of thirty seven you were editing medical journals, (sarcastically) that really enjoyable profession. It was then that you began your acting classes. Why did you decide to turn to theatre then?

JM: Well, Id done a couple of things that I thought I would like. When I got out of the army I went to college, and I got a Bachelor's degree in English, and then I went to University, and I got a master's degree in English. Because I thought I wanted to teach English. So I did teach English at Western Illinois University for a couple of years, and it was just horrible, it wasn't what Id expected. So I moved to Chicago. I had worked my way through college, undergraduate college, working as an orderly at a hospital. So I had a huge medical background and a Master's degree in English. So naturally I went into editing. So I was the associate editor of a medical journal in Chicago, and I was thirty seven, and all of a sudden I just sort of started going through this dark night of the soul... where I just.... Is this going to be it for me, am I going to be spending the rest of my life writing about cataracts and hemorrhoids... and.... just not what I wanted to do, and I was just intensely depressed all the time. And I thought to myself, what did I ever do in my life, that I really loved. And it was growing up in Manchester. When I was a part of the Stratford children's theatre, when I was doing all sorts.... you know, when I was playing Polonius when I was ten. And I thought, this is what I wanted to do. And then a series of things happened. I went to Manchester to visit my family, and I went to the Royal Exchange Theatre, and Albert Finney and Leo McKern (sp???) were doing Uncle Varney (??) ...... and then I came to London and Michael Hor___ doing .... Travesty?? Jumpers..... jumpers....at the National Theatre. And all these images and these performances and everything, and were just in my head and it was just exploding with these .... and I thought this is it. This is what I have to do. So I went back to the states, and enrolled in a little theatre company... They were giving acting classes, just started by David Mammot and Bill Macy, just nominated for an Oscar last year in Fargo in a movie... so I enrolled in a class with David, who wasn't well known at all at that time, and he cast me out of his class into his new play. Which was the water engine at that time. And the second play that I did was called Ashes which was with John Malkovich and John invited me to join his company which is Steppenwolf, and I've never been out of work since ... it's an amazing story, I know. But it was just like life was waiting for me to make that decision, and when I finally made it, it just took me places I never even believed existed.

EF: You're quite naughty on stage, though. At least rumor has it...

JM: Oh yeah... we have a lot of fun, believe me. We play... we have a LOT of fun on stage. Probably the most outrageous things I've ever done has been with Dennis Farina. Do you know Dennis? The actor Dennis Farina... We were doing a play for his daughter and I would do stupid things like put pin pricks in cups he had to drink coffee out of, so he was falling down.... And it was a silly thing to do because Dennis is a very big, burly guy and he was a policeman and I always spent a lot of time handcuffed to a chair. And then one time I also cut out a little picture of myself and in the dressing room while he was on stage I went to his wallet and took out his police I.D. and I put my picture on his I.D and he didn't even know that until about .. oh I think maybe ... two months later when he was arresting somebody and he flashed the wallet and said "you're under arrest" and the guy said "who's that" and looked.... But he got me back. He had me arrested one morning at two o'clock in the morning. I was asleep. Banging on my door, and I opened the door and these big, burly Chicago coppers were there, and they said, "JOHN MAHONEY," and I said, "yes, that's me" .... "YOU'RE UNDER ARREST" and I said, "what for" and they said "FOR IMPERSONATING AN ACTOR". Dennis had put them up to that, so..... But yes, we have fun. It's not all .........You're supposed to have fun on stage, you know...

EF: You also seem to have a huge amount of fun on Frasier. It's just finished it's fifth season. It's one of the most highly rated shows on American television.... Can we talk about your dog??

JM: Yes

EF: Are you fond of it?

JM: No.

EF: Is it fond of you??

JM: I'm a dog person, I've had dogs all my life. But you see, it's not really a dog. It's more like a little robot. It's an actor. It displays no emotion whatsoever. I swear that dog doesn't know any of us even though we've done five seasons of Frasier. The only person who has any sort of fun with it is its trainer. It'll do anything in the world for her.

EF: Yet it licks your face!

JM: It will only lick our face if they put liver paste on our face. That's how they do it. So for example, when Niles was trying to impress Daphne with how well he got along with dogs, for the camera, what we had to do without the camera seeing it, he put liver paste behind his ear, and then the dog jumps up and licks it off. And that's what they do. If they ever want the dog, for example, to lick my face, then they have to put either fish oil, or something like that, on my face, and it'll get up and lick it off. But it would never wag its tail, it would never lick your face, it would never do *anything* unless the trainer gave it a little signal: pulling her ear or rubbing her nose, or doing something with her hand.