PLAYBOY: How did you meet him?
LEARY: He loved No Cure for Cancer and said, "Call up that kid. I want to meet him." I was in L.A. making a movie, and when I pulled up to the house, I was like, What kind of fucking practical joke is this? The door opened, and I recognized his ex-wife Jeannie, who he was back together with. Suddenly he comes sauntering in wearing a retro-cool Members Only jacket, and I'm thinking to myself, Holy shit, it's fucking Dean Martin. I almost collapsed because he looked just like my father--same size, thick hair, big hands, same glasses and personality. We had dinner and shot the shit all night. He was drinking 7 and 7s, but I wanted to be very cognizant, so I was nursing my beer. He kept asking, "You want another drink?" and I was like, "No, I'm good," and he goes, "What are you, a pussy?" I was like, My God, Dean Martin called me a pussy! Wait until the guys hear this. Besides Clint Eastwood, who I worked with on True Crime, it doesn't get much bigger than that. I also worked with Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman on Wag the Dog, but Dean Martin? That's a whole other world.

PLAYBOY: What did you learn from working with Eastwood, Hoffman and De Niro?
LEARY: Working as an actor with people of that level, you think, It's definitely not a level playing field. De Niro made me want to be an actor in the first place. I was a huge Eastwood fan, had read all the books about him and told him I wanted to pick his brain. He let me sit and watch between shots and ask questions, which is how I learned how fucking easy it is to act if you do your homework and preparation before you get to the set. You don't have to waste the studio's money or your own time. Eastwood is like fucking John Wayne. He's been famous since I was born, but he's a gentleman's gentleman, an extremely cool guy with a fucking great sense of humor. Everybody stayed in the same hotel, and at the end of the night we'd all go back and have drinks. He's a huge jazzman, and we had been talking about a couple of albums he hadn't heard. So on an afternoon off I went to a local jazz music store, got the two albums and just left them for him. That night on my hotel voice mail, it's "Hey, Denis. Clint. Hey, thanks for the albums, man. I've been dying to get these things. I owe you." I was like, Fuck, how do I get this off the phone and onto a tape recorder? I completely fucked it up by erasing it.

PLAYBOY: You often mention real people in your act. How would you handle a topic like, say, Barry Bonds and steroids?
LEARY: As a baseball fan, I don't give a shit about him. My problem with Barry Bonds began when he made comments that turned the idea of breaking an incredible record into a racial thing. Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs. Had he taken steroids and not been out of shape for half of his career, how many fucking home runs would he have hit? Guys like Ruth and Hank Aaron were amazing--especially because Aaron's not a big fucking guy--and they set the records Barry's ultimately going to break. So if I were Hank Aaron, I'd be fucking ripshit. In 1999 my son and I were at the All-Star Game at Fenway Park, and when Mark McGwire knocked 12 out of 13 balls over the Green Monster, my son asked, "Dad, is he on drugs?" What am I supposed to say? I don't know if he is. I don't know Bonds, but from what I've read and seen, he seems so egotistical and arrogant--always has been, even before the steroids--that I don't think he has it in him to come clean and tell the truth. He's going to find himself in a real fucking hell storm. Do you really want the record, knowing how you got it, knowing Hank Aaron is still alive and working in baseball? I wouldn't. Fuck that.

PLAYBOY: Should Americans accept the probability that every future politician will have used drugs and had extracurricular sex?
LEARY: If I were suddenly the top man on the planet, had the plane and the world's biggest army and all, pretty much what I'd ask the outgoing president first is "Where's the pussy? What time is the blow job?" This is how democracy should work. We should expect free blow jobs for the president right from the beginning. If you work as a White House intern, you're blowing the president; that's just the deal. Balance the budget like Clinton--extra blow jobs. Hollywood starlets should be made available to the president. If he's doing a good job, Keira Knightley gets told, "Part of your job is to fuck the president or at least blow him; then we'll put you in a big movie." With a female president, it's "Mel Gibson is coming over at four to fuck you and take a picture with you, then he's off to make his next movie." Bush is supposedly the closest we've had to the perfect family man who goes to church and all that, yet he's one of the biggest fuckups who has ever been in office--a true moron when it comes to leading the country. If that's a perfect guy, I'll take the flawed guys.

PLAYBOY: Your 1994 movie The Ref had you playing a thief who holds an insufferably dysfunctional family hostage. It should have ignited your movie career but wasn't a hit.
LEARY: That movie not doing well is still a sore spot. I kept saying it had a fucking shitty title and we should start making lists of other titles. But Teddy Demme, the director, kept saying, "I like the title," and Disney ended up going with it, which is one way they killed the movie. The other way was with a bad release date. I will always love Jeffrey Katzenberg, the former Disney studio president, because he called me and Teddy after the release and said, "I take full responsibility. I should have demanded you guys change the fucking title."

PLAYBOY: Has your TV success brought you more movie offers?
LEARY: Most movies suck, even the independent ones. Hollywood is like baseball: Hit three good movies out of 10 and you're a Hall of Famer. I don't think like those guys who say, "I'm hot again, so I've got to get back into a big movie." It's a lot of work and pressure for Kiefer on 24 and a couple of my friends on The Sopranos to do movies, but they're not writing their shows, like I am. Rescue Me is the equivalent of doing six movies from February to the end of August. I met with director Adrian Lyne about playing the other guy in Unfaithful, and when I asked him how many takes he does, he said, "That depends on how we're feeling." I walked away thinking, No fucking way. I turned down Martin Scorsese, who I love and respect as a filmmaker, for this movie he just made with Nicholson, The Departed. He wanted me to shoot on weekends while I was doing Rescue Me, but I didn't want to be in the position of fucking myself over trying to make him happy or vice versa. I have plenty of work, and I don't really need the money.

PLAYBOY: So what's next after Rescue Me?
LEARY: I have a couple of movies I want to write and one I'm in the middle of. I have another idea for a television series. I won't star in it, but I'll produce and write the pilot. I also have to finish writing a book that pretty much sums up my take on the world: Kiss My Irish Ass.

PLAYBOY:One of your punch lines is "Life sucks. Get a fucking helmet." Do you follow that advice?
LEARY: I have friends who jump out of planes, but I'm not jumping out of a fucking plane even if it's on fire. I'm addicted to adrenaline, juice and competition, but I get that through playing hockey. Most of the time I don't even wear a helmet when I play, which seems ridiculous because if you don't pay attention, you'll get your fucking head chopped off. If I had the choice, I'd want to die either laughing or fucking. Both at the same time would be excellent.