The world lost comedy icon John Candy—known for classic funny flicks like Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Spaceballs, The Great Outdoors and Cool Runnings, as well as all of the hilarious movie quotes that came with them—three decades ago (the beloved Canadian actor died of cardiac arrest at age 43) and yet the memory of his kind and sweet nature is seemingly still very clear to his famous co-stars.
Laurie Metcalf, who performed alongside Candy in the 1989 family comedy Uncle Buck, is one such co-star with fond memories of the late, great actor. She recounted to People about filming a dance scene with Candy, with Metcalf playing a shamelessly flirty divorcée, Marcie Dahlgren-Frost, who is trying to put the moves on Candy’s Buck Russell, a lazy but good-hearted bachelor tasked with babysitting his brother’s children while their parents are away.
The actress, who “hadn’t done hardly any movies” at that point in her career and felt out of her “comfort zone,” told the publication how Candy’s patience and generosity helped her push forward through filming:
What I found helpful at the time was to drill the scene over and over. And I’m sure that it was the last thing he wanted to do, having appeared in probably every frame of that movie, was to spend time doing something over and over again before it was even shot. But he was so patient and generous with me, and that’s what we did. We just worked on it together and had a lot of fun.
Though Metcalf is herself a comedy great, known for her multiple-Emmy-winning performance as Aunt Jackie on the classic sitcom Roseanne, she admitted that she was initially nervous about going toe-to-toe with an improv “master” like John Candy, who cut his teeth at Canada’s Second City Comedy troupe as well as its SCTV spinoff, one of the best sketch comedy TV shows of all time. But his skills at “reading people and knowing what would make them comfortable” helped put Metcalf at ease:
And I think that for me sums up how big-hearted he was and what a sweetheart he was. …He just taught me a lot about being a great scene partner. I was scared to death to improv with him because it’s scary to me to begin with, but then to be faced with possibly doing it with a master? No. So, I very cautiously stuck to the script. And I think he picked that up about me too. He was good at reading people and knowing what would make them comfortable.
His SCTV comrade Catherine O’Hara, who also starred with Candy in Home Alone, echoed Metcalf’s sentiments, calling the actor “just as lovely as you’d want him to be” and previously revealing how John would amuse fans on the street by doing comedy bits with them.
And he was famously great with kids, as Colin Hanks—who grew up with Candy in his life as a friend of his parents, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson—dubbed the movie star a “sweet, sweet presence” during a January 2023 episode of the WTF with Marc Maron podcast.
You can see revisit all of John Candy’s humor and sweetness, along with Laurie Metcalf’s great supporting work, for yourself by renting Uncle Buck on Apple TV.