For most of us, Wallace Shawn can be what I like to call a “that guy”. You recognize his face and voice from somewhere instantly, but you can’t remember as to where and when. Let me refresh your memory: this is the guy who voices the most famous animated T-Rex in movie history, Rex from the Toy Story movies, and who was also the character of Vizzini in The Princess Bride (1987). Over his multi-decade career, his screen credits have spanned everything from prestige dramas to recurring television roles like Grand Nagus Zek in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993) and Dr. John Sturgis in Young Sheldon (2017-2024). Shawn is one of the most uniquely versatile figures in American entertainment. Yet within the theatrical world, he is equally celebrated as a deeply provocative, avant-garde, and politically charged playwright whose work frequently tackles inequality, morality, and social class.

At 82 years of age, he was kind enough to visit us in Montreal! I was also glad to be able to know more about his background and the numerous projects he was involved in. This guy worked A LOT; you don’t even realize.

Shawn can be known first and foremost as a prestige scholar. He originally studied history at Harvard and philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford with intentions of entering diplomacy. That was a while back!  Early in his career, in the 1970s, Wallace Shawn did not see himself as an actor or a voice actor at all. He started as a playwright in theatre, but he quickly realized that the industry hated his scripts. That makes him laugh a lot today, considering how far his career took him. One day, he took a theatre gig as a favour to a friend, and Woody Allen’s casting director at the time was in the audience. That sealed his fate, and that’s when he was cast in Manhattan (1979) in a supporting role…and he was off.

Although Shawn’s Q&A was quite brief, he was surprisingly asked about his father, who was the editor of The New Yorker Magazine for many years. This grand professional stature did cast somewhat of a shadow over Shawn as a writer; his younger years were dominated by the fact that his father was very respected. Let’s say he had big shoes to fill if he wanted to succeed in the arts.

His breakout role will be a few years later in My Dinner with Andre (1981), which he co-wrote with his long-time collaborator Andre Gregory. Shawn plays a heightened version of his own anxious, struggling playwright persona. The entire film consists of a fluid, real-time philosophical debate over a restaurant dinner, balancing his character’s down-to-earth pragmatism against Gregory’s mystical, avant-garde worldview.

Of course, to younger audience members like myself, Shawn is actually synonymous with Pixar animation. Since 1995, he has been the iconic voice of Rex the toy dinosaur in the Toy Story franchise. As Toy Story 5 is currently in theatres, the comiccon participants had a lot to ask him about Rex – he finds it fascinating that he is still able to jump back into this role so easily after 30 years. At the time, it was hard to predict the immense success of Toy Story, but he finds great joy in seeing his character evolve with the other toys. Also, he’s happy that he can still read the lines with his iconic high-pitched tone the same as he did in 1995. Although very different from some of his performances from earlier, Rex is dear to his heart and loved talking about him.

Finally, Shawn achieved permanent pop-culture immortality with older Millennials and members of Gen X in Rob Reiner’s fantasy-comedy The Princess Bride (1987). Pivoting completely from quiet realism to theatrical absurdity, he played Vizzini, the pompous, self-proclaimed Sicilian criminal mastermind hired to kidnap Princess Buttercup. Delivering the word “Inconceivable!” with dripping, exasperated arrogance, Shawn crafted a comedic performance so memorable that it remains heavily quoted decades later. He had fond memories of the production, namely a beautiful quiet moment at the top of a hill with French actor André René Roussimoff (who played the giant).

Together, these three movies perfectly encapsulate his versatile brilliance: his capacity for dense, profound philosophical writing on one hand, and an unmatched gift for brilliant, scenery-chewing comedic character acting on the other. It was quite fun getting to know him!