Kevin Pollak had an immediate answer when asked to identify the wildest actor he had ever worked with.
The “Tulsa King” star pointed to the late Rip Torn, describing a series of strange episodes from the set of “Canadian Bacon,” the John Candy comedy released after Candy’s death.
“Oh, jeez. It’s not even a competition,” Pollak said on “The Rich Eisen Show.”
Torn, who died in 2019, regularly kept the cast and crew guessing, Pollak said.
“Every day Rip would decide someone in the cast or crew was out to get him,” Pollak recalled.
Pollak, also known for “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” said Torn frequently mentioned that he had appeared on former President Richard Nixon’s enemies list.
“If a day also went by without Rip Torn saying, ‘I was on Nixon’s list.’ All right, we got it,” Pollak joked.
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Asked what Torn had done to land on the list, Pollak answered, “Well, no one wanted to ask, quite frankly.”
Still, Pollak’s Nixon story was not the most bizarre memory he shared.
He recalled that actor Kevin O’Connor and his new wife once stayed in a room beside Torn’s at Toronto’s Four Seasons Hotel.
Pollak said the couple repeatedly heard Torn shouting through the hotel’s thin walls. After several weeks of listening to the outbursts, O’Connor and his wife created their own top-10 ranking of the actor’s most memorable remarks.
At the top of their list, Pollak said, was a line Torn allegedly shouted at a sex worker: “I said milk it like a cow.”
The story offered Pollak’s latest glimpse into Torn’s famously unpredictable behavior away from the camera.
Torn built a respected career in film, television and theater. He received an Academy Award nomination for “Cross Creek” and became widely recognized for appearances in projects such as “Men in Black” and “The Larry Sanders Show.”
His performance as Artie on “The Larry Sanders Show” brought six consecutive Emmy nominations and earned him the award in 1996.