“A very powerful man”: the only actor capable of leaving Ted Danson starstruck
Unless they’ve grown up watching him and religiously followed his small-screen career for years, if not decades, you can’t really imagine many actors being left starstruck by Ted Danson.
That’s not intended to be disrespectful, since you don’t spend over 50 years as a fixture of the small screen without doing something right, but in terms of fame, stature, and status, he’s never really been regarded as an A-lister who’s followed by screaming crowds wherever they go.
He probably likes it that way, too, since everybody really does know his name, but he’s not so famous that he can’t live a reasonably normal life. Danson has been in the business long enough to work with some legendary names, and schmooze with others at industry get-togethers, but there was only one of them who left him genuinely awestruck.
Again, not to be disrespectful, but they crossed paths on a made-for-television movie that nobody remembers, which encapsulates the level Danson has generally operated at. He’s been in plenty of movies, but the biggest hit of them all was Three Men and a Baby, and that was released almost 40 years ago, but only if you don’t count his cameo in Saving Private Ryan.
Still, many icons of cinema have wound down their careers by appearing in either TV shows or features that air only on cable networks, and Diane Ladd was one of them, appearing alongside Danson, Mary Steenburgen, and Queen Latifah in 2002’s CBS original, Living with the Dead.
She wasn’t the only legend to lend support in the supernatural crime drama about a septet of dead children who communicate with Danson from the other side to help him uncover the identity of their killer, though, with Academy Award winner Jack Palance also making one of his final screen outings.
“He’s great!” Danson said at the time. “What a handful; a very powerful man. I’m as starstruck as anyone, this guy was in Shane, for god sakes! He’s amazing, a very energetic man.” That’s to be expected, since Palance did one-armed push-ups onstage at the Oscars when he won his ‘Best Supporting Actor’ prize for City Slickers at the age of 73.
A decade later, and he still hadn’t slowed down. “I was having a conversation with him and asked if he exercised because, you know, I go to the gym and lift weights,” Danson continued. “He told me he liked to box. And then, he promptly got up and started shadowboxing with so much power and grace.”
Palance was in his early 80s at the time, but was clearly still a specimen. From that point on, the Cheers alum admitted he would only address him with, “Yes, sir, no, sir, Mr Palance,” with his hero worship taken to the next level when he realised the veteran remained capable of knocking him the fuck out with ease.
