Paul Fusco
Paul Fusco is an actor, born 1953.
Paul Fusco has played one character for forty years, and he built the show around it himself. He is a puppeteer first: the hand, the voice and the creator of ALF, the sitcom alien who landed in a suburban garage in 1986, and he was also a writer, producer and director on the series, which is an unusual amount of control for the man operating the puppet.
The technical demand of that job is easy to underestimate. ALF was performed on a set built to conceal a puppeteer underneath it, so Fusco had to hit comic timing with a full live cast, in real time, from below the furniture, take after take. The character's sarcasm is why it worked: ALF was written as a houseguest who insults his hosts, and a rubber puppet delivering that has to be funnier than a person would be or the whole thing collapses.
Everything since has been the same character. He formed Alien Productions with Tom Patchett and Bernie Brillstein, made the film Project: ALF in 1996, and brought ALF onto Love Boat: The Next Wave, into a Funny or Die feature about Donald Trump's book, and into an episode of Duncanville in 2020. Nearly every credit to his name is the same alien, which is either a limitation or the definition of success, depending on how you count.
Movies (2)
TV (4)
Where to start with Paul Fusco
ALF is the only real answer, and the early episodes are the ones to watch: the show is at its sharpest before the family softens toward him, while the joke is still that a sarcastic alien has moved in and nobody can make him leave. It holds up better than its reputation and worse than nostalgia claims, which is normal for 1980s sitcoms.
Project: ALF is the feature attempt, made without the original family, and it is for the committed only. Love Boat: The Next Wave and Duncanville are novelty appearances two decades apart, and the later one is genuinely funny about how strange it is to still be doing this. Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal: The Movie is the oddest thing on the list by a distance, a comedy sketch stretched to feature length with ALF in it.