'Desperate' Wallace Shawn falls on inconceivable times, visits Edmonton Expo Centre

When 72-year-old actor Wallace Shawn was asked why he was in Edmonton for the city's Entertainment and Comic Expo, he was honest.

"I'm a desperate man. I've lived beyond my means," he told Edmonton AM on Friday.

"Some people are prudent and they hoardany money that they've made, and other people just can't resist that extra hot fudge sundae, even if they can't really afford it.

"I'm prepared to do almost anything, really, that isn't strictly evil."

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Shawn, who has had roles in everything from Manhattan to The Princess Bride to Air Buddies, visited with Edmontonians this weekend at the Edmonton Expo Centre.

He's perhaps most known for his single-word line in The Princess Bride "Inconceivable!" a word that often gets yelled at him from fans.

"I kind of didn't quite get the joke when I was doing it," he said. "I thought it was a quirk of the character that he kept repeating the word, but I still don't have any idea why that struck such a chord with some people."

Shawn was invited to the expo due to the seemingly everlasting popularity of The Princess Bride. The film from 1987 is still talked about in many circles, almost 30 years after it was released.

"We all just thought it was, you know, one of that year's films," he said. "I don't remember anyone saying, 'Do you realize this could be a famous film that people will be talking about in 2016?' "

Work he's most proud of done 'secretly'

It's not The Princess Bride that Shawn is most proud of. His voice has been in Family Guy, Toy Story and The Incredibles, but the work he's most fond of is not what he's most known for.

"The things I'm most proud of are weird things that I've done almost secretly," he said.

Two of the works he mentioned are plays, and the third is called My Dinner with Andre, a 1981 film about two friends who meet for dinner and share anecdotes, slowly realizing their differences in opinions.

Since then, he's been in a host of other movies, television shows and video games playing a variety of characters and in the case ofBoJack Horseman, even playing himself.

"I don't quite get it, but I really made a living with a type of humour that I don't fully appreciate, including the idea of myself as a joke," he said. "I'm actually, in my private life, rather pompous and sort of take myself too seriously."

His refusal to repeat his famous line may be an example of how he takes himself too seriously. He said being asked to saythe word "inconceivable," which has been deemed hiscatch phrase, gets old pretty quick.

"To be asked to say your catch phrase is actually demeaning," he said. "It's diminishing to you as an individual, more or less the way, let's say, if a beautiful actress would be asked to take off [her] sweater so [the person] could see her breasts more clearly because they're so famous.

"That actress might feel completely diminished."

Despite being most known for one single role, it's inconceivable to think Shawn is a one-dimensional actor.