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Fred Willard

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* The actor and comedian plays a dog-show commentator in Christopher Guest’s mock documentary “Best in Show.”

A Little Theater: Thursday or Friday is a good night to see little theater. We go to places that are anywhere from 40 to 99 seats. Some of my favorites are Theater West, the Victory Theater or, in Hollywood, the Cast Theater. If [the play is] in the Valley, we’ll stop at Antonio’s, an Italian restaurant in Sherman Oaks. I’m also a big fan of old Hollywood places. We always go to Musso & Frank. Then if we’re up to it, we stop in at the [Hollywood] Improv. It’s just as much fun to sit in the bar and talk to friends, like Richard Lewis, Max Alexander and Rich Scheidner.

Batter Up: Saturdays, I play softball in a longtime pickup game. It’s been booted around from Veterans Field in West L.A. to Pepperdine. Now we’re playing at different high schools, wherever you can get a permit. When I first started it was a little more competitive. . . . I used to play on a team called the Hollywood Stars. We played in Fenway Park, the Oakland Coliseum. It was great fun. Mark Harmon would play, Jack Scalia. Every actor wants to be an athlete, and every athlete wants to be an actor.

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Saturday Night: Once or twice a year I love to get in the car and drive to Bakersfield to see the Bakersfield Blades, a San Francisco Giants farm team. It’s an hour-and-a-half drive up there, there’s not much traffic, and from Magic Mountain on north, it’s a very picturesque drive. If you’re really ambitious, you can follow James Dean’s last route.

Sunday Stroll: I’ll go hiking up around where the Hollywood sign is. Or a nice trip is to jump in the car and go to Santa Barbara. We eat at the Montecito Inn or the Coast Grill. We just drive up and back. If we stay home, Sunday night is a good night to go to the Encino Town Center movie theaters. It’s relaxing to go see a foreign film, then eat at a Chinese restaurant we really like called Prince.

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