Jason Alexander. Photo by Rachel Koh/North by Northwestern.

I was raised on Seinfeld. While other kids grew up watching Nickelodeon back in its prime with programming featuring Doug and Rocko’s Modern Life, my parents had my brothers and I hooked on the show about nothing. As Jason Alexander spoke to a packed house at Ryan Auditorium Thursday night, I was happy to see that I wasn’t the only addict. In a Q&A session sponsored by the Fiedler Hillel Center, Alexander, best known for his role as the neurotic, often self-loathing George Costanza on Seinfeld, reflected on a career spanning film, television, Broadway and even a brief McDonald’s commercial.

The informal chat, mediated by sophomore Aaron Eisenberg, began with the actor’s reflection on growing up in a Jewish household and quickly moved to discussing his career both on- and off-Broadway as a theater actor. With an air of humility and subtle humor, Alexander kept the audience amused as he explained how he fell into acting.

Alexander hit his stride discussing, arguably, his greatest creation in George Costanza. Moving through the story of the creation of Seinfeld, from its slow start to its now worldwide recognition, he shared stories of the creators and cast that he worked with over nine seasons. In explaining Seinfeld co-creator Larry David’s influence on the George Costanza character, Alexander launched into a George-like fit as he did his best Larry David impression, a moment the crowd completely devoured, erupting in applause and laughter. “George has a strange sensibility about the world,” Alexander said about the character’s outlook. He went further to say that nearly every moment on the show was inspired by something that really happened; yes, even the infamous Contest and the accidental limo ride to the neo-Nazi rally.

Alexander also confirmed rumors that the whole cast would be reuniting for a story arc on Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, saying that the premise for the story is that the four actors are gathering for a Seinfeld reunion episode. While Alexander couldn’t pick just one favorite episode, joking that “It’s like asking a father who’s your favorite child? Which in my case would be my older one,” it seems pretty clear that Georgie Boy Costanza garnered a pretty solid standing in our list of favorites.

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North by Northwestern had an opportunity to sit down with Alexander shortly after the show. Excerpts:

The first film I saw you in was actually Pretty Woman, where you played the misogynistic lawyer, and then later in Shallow Hal you played this kind of womanizer character. Do you like the challenge of playing a character that audiences may not like?

It’s definitely fun. I’m sure I’m not the only actor who will say it, but when you’re playing villains you don’t approach it like you’re playing a villain. You’re always thinking, like, well he’s right. If you don’t do that, if you go into it thinking I’m the villain then you’re kind of back in the silent films with the cape and the handlebar mustache. I’m not usually thinking will the audience like them, I’m trying to think will the audience understand them at all, is there a point of view to convey. In the scene in [Pretty Woman] where my character actually attacks Julia [Roberts], we did a version where she beats me up. So I didn’t know what version was going to be in the film until I saw it so there was never any worrying [that I was] going to come off as a jerk. With Shallow Hal, I just thought he was such a laughable character that you couldn’t take anything that he was espousing seriously.

Especially when the audience learned that he had a tail.

The moment for me is when we did the scene where he apparently had been dating this gorgeous woman who shows up in the park and he blows her off because her middle toe is bigger than her other toe and that to him is a sign of inferiority. I just went, wow.

You are obviously best known for playing George Costanza on Seinfeld. When people approach you on the street, do you hear George or Jason?

George.

Always George?

Not always, largely. If I’m walking somewhere and someone just yells “George” trying to get me to notice them, they’ll never get it because early on, when Seinfeld was starting to become a thing and people were making a fuss, I was walking somewhere and somebody yelled out “George!” I turn around all puffed up and they were calling a guy named George; it was not me. It was a very embarrassing incident, so I just went, you know, there are people named George in the world and it may not always be about me.

One of the prize jewels of the series is “The Marine Biologist” and fans know that George is notorious for spinning these lies to women. Was there ever an alter ego or career you lied about to get a woman interested?

Me? Oh, darling, you give me far too much credit. I met my wife right out of college so I never had a dating life. My dating life was in college. I was probably the last graduating class to be pre-AIDS and everybody was having sex with everybody. By the time I met my wife the only thing I hadn’t tried was monogamy so I thought, “Well, that could be interesting.” I literally met her six weeks after I left school and we moved in with each other three weeks after I met her and that’s been my life ever since. I lie to her all the time, but no, I’ve never had to lie.

I read that Ricky Gervais once said that George Costanza was the greatest sitcom character of all time.

Aw, isn’t that sweet?

What is one episode or one plotline that completely confirms that statement?

One of my favorite things that I ever got to do as George [was when] George was working at Pendant Publishing at the time and he was having sex with the cleaning woman. It’s that scene where he’s called into the boss’s office and confronted with it. It’s basically thrown right in his face. As you’re a writer you would [think] there are a million responses here. George takes that long moment to think about it and just says, “Is that wrong? Should I not have done that?” That was brilliant because it lets you see him go through the entire rolodex of, “Well, I could say this, I could say this, I could try this.” And it was just, to me, just a delicious moment. I don’t think I ever would have tried that [tactic].

Do you have any advice you would give to a college student getting into comedy?

I was never trying to get into comedy, per se. Everybody that I know in comedy says just get up. The trick in comedy is finding what you have to say and how you say it that makes you different from what everybody else is talking about and how they’re saying it. [Jerry] Seinfeld himself has a work ethic that’s extraordinary. He writes every day. He makes himself write something every day and I think that’s probably the key to being a wonderful comic, not necessarily a comic actor, but certainly a comic.

What show is your Seinfeld, a show that you constantly find yourself quoting or relating to your life?

I think most of life gets handled by Family Guy these days. If either a Stewie, a Quagmire, a Brian or a Peter line doesn’t cover the situation, then there’s probably nothing left to say.