 Now you see him; now you don't. Given Anderson's status as a retired magician/actor, that familiar hocus-pocus saying has special meaning for him in recent years. The star of Night Court (1984-92) and Dave's World (1993-97), both hit sitcoms, isn't entirely out of the business. Yet he keeps an awfully low profile these days. "I love it now when I fill in a registration card for software or something and I'll put down retired,'" says Anderson, 48. "I can't wait till I get the discount at Denny's." Indeed, other than commercials for a long-distance telephone provider, he has done little in the way of acting since Dave's World. And aside from an on-the-drawing-board prime-time revival of What's My Line? that he would host, he has next to nothing on his plate. Granted, he starred last July as Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey, a TV remake of the 1950s James Stewart classic, but the movie's premiere came more than three years after its completion in 1996. Anderson toiled for 13 seasons as the central characters of his two sitcoms and, before that, toured the country for years as a magician and street performer. So it's easy to see why he savors his current status as a homebody dad. When you have a family, saying good-bye every time you have to go on the road gets really old," says Anderson, who lives in Pasadena, California. "But thanks to those two shows, I don't have to work. And I've been able to take a couple of years and raise my son. "I don't get out much, and I don't go far. I ride my bike around. And I've killed my battery a couple of times by not starting my car often enough. Get somebody to bring the groceries, and I could be a survivalist." © 1999, Biography Magazine.
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