Back when he was a "serious" actor, people treated Leslie Nielsen like one of the characters he played: a lawyer, a detective, a diplomat.
Nielsen solved that problem. He bought a whoopee cushion."I'd be expected to be stable and well-mannered," the star of the "Naked Gun" movie series said in this week's Parade magazine. "So I got a whoopee cushion. One squeeze, and people would say, `Oh, it's that kind of party."'
Nielsen, 68, has played nearly 1,600 dramatic parts and appeared in "Forbidden Planet" and "The Poseidon Adventure." He said it took his 1980 bit as a deadpan doctor in "Airplane!" to convince people he's a funny guy.
To his delight, the wacky image stuck. Last year, Nielsen published "The Naked Truth," a fictional account of his life, and released a comedy video, "Bad Golf Made Easier." A second video, "Bad Golf My Way," is due out this month.