Billy Gardell has no idea why he keeps getting cast in film roles as a cop.
Maybe it’s the pudgy honesty the stand-up comedian wears on his face that got him his role as Officer Mike Biggs on the TV show “Mike Molly.”
Maybe Gardell’s just got that look casting directors couldn’t refuse when they were looking for the cop in “My Name Is Earl.”
“Maybe I’m just one of the good guys,” Gardella says, cutting his sentence short over the phone with a yawn.
Gardell is in Monroe, La., filming his next big-screen venture, “Dancing and the Dame,” the story of a detective (played by guess who?) forced to partner with a K-9 officer to stop a counterfeiting ring.
Chuckling at the comparison to the ’80s flick “Turner Hootch” that paired Tom Hanks with a bull mastiff, Gardell isn’t the slightest bit paranoid at being typecast as a cop. It’s all work, and it’s all good.
“It’s better to be typecast than not cast,” he says.
Besides, acting is just the icing on the cake of a career that dates back 27 years to when the Pennsylvania-born, Florida-raised comedian first started performing stand-up on a bet.
“I always wanted to be a stand-up comedian,” he says.
At the time, Gardell was shuffling jobs between a department store warehouse and a comedy club in Orlando, and “running my mouth” about getting up onstage during the club’s open-mic night.
“I told them, ‘I’m going to be a comic,’ and I made a bet with some co-workers that said I wouldn’t do it. If I didn’t do an open mic night, I couldn’t cover the bet.”
Gardell covered the bet by getting up onstage at Bonkerz, one of Orlando’s premier comedy spots at the time. But it wasn’t easy.
“I couldn’t tell you what I talked about,” he says now. “I yelled about my day, then it was just really tough. I couldn’t get a laugh.”
Not at first. But the crowd warmed up.
“I kept chasing that,” Gardell says of those first laughs that finally started to appear that night.
The laughs only got louder as Guardell graduated from Bonkerz to a stand-up comedy career that took him to stages across the country.
After eight years of doing stand-up on the road, Gardell moved to Los Angeles “to try to get bit parts here and there,” he says, recalling the first pilot episode for a TV show he landed in 1988 — a pilot that didn’t go anywhere.
“I did 12 failed pilots,” he says.
But Gardell kept working his stand-up routine along with going to auditions.
The persistence paid off with film roles in “Bad Santa” with Billy Bob Thornton, “You, Me and Dupree” with Owen Wilson, and “Avenging Angelo” with Sylvester Stallone and Anthony Quinn.
And there were recurring roles in several TV series, including NBC’s “Heist,” “The Practice,” “Yes, Dear,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Lucky, Bones,” “My Name Is Earl,” “Monk” and “The King of Queens.”
Gardell cites Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby and George Carlin as comedic influences, but when it comes to transcending the comedy stage with dramatic roles on film, only one name sits atop Gardell’s influence pedestal.
“Jackie Gleason,” he says. “He was great at reaction, and he was a great listener. More than that, his heart … Gleason had a great way of making you care about what he was thinking without saying a word.”
Gardell has also appeared as himself on the Comedy Central series “Make Me Laugh,” and with comic Dennis Miller on Miller’s TV show “Dennis Miller.”
Now, shifting between a stand-up show onstage — such as he is set to perform Saturday night at Blue Chip Casino in Michigan City — and film work he is shooting in Louisiana for “Dancing and the Dame,” is a natural transition.
“It can be a challenge,” Gardell says. “Stand-up is about battle, about forcing your will on the audience. And acting is an exercise in trust — you have to learn the other players.”
So what happens when Gardell forces his comedic will on an audience at the expense of his wife of 13 years, Patty? Such as the routine where he compares himself to Sully — the hero pilot who landed the plane on the Hudson River — to get out of his chores.
“My wife will say, ‘You didn’t clean up in here …’ I landed a plane on the Hudson River and you want me to clean up? ‘You can land a plane on a river but you can’t cut the grass anytime soon. …’ That’s the joy of marriage right there.”
Good thing Patty Gardell has a great sense of humor, especially when Gardell gets home after a show.
“I like to make sure that I know the right things to use,” Gardell says of choosing comedic fodder that comes out of his home.
“If you’re listening,” he says to his wife, “you understand that I’m not saying anything bad. There’s a lot of love that goes into those jokes.”