Bronson Pinchot, who is best remembered by his role as Balki in TV series Perfect Strangers, has worked alongside some Hollywood heavyweights, gave a colorful interview to the AVClub. Bronson recounts his career and gives brutally honest memories of his more famous costars, including Eddie Murphy, Denzel Washington, Mischa Barton, Tom Hanks, Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorcese and Tom Cruise.

He recalls working with Eddie Murphy in two Beverly Hills Cop movies as the hilarious character, Serge, and describes the comic as someone who was really depressed.

“Eddie was going through his period at the time of doing movies that were not hits, and he was very low-spirited, low-energy. I said to him, “All anyone ever wants to know when they meet me is what you’re like.” And he said, “I bet they don’t ask that anymore.” And then when we did a scene, we were shooting, and he was so low-energy that (director) John Landis sent him upstairs.”

He also reveals what it was like to work with a 20-something Tom Cruise in Risky Business.

“We didn’t know it was going to be a big hit. We thought Tom was the biggest bore on the face of the Earth.

“He was tense and made constant, constant unrelated homophobic comments, like, “You want some ice cream, in case there are no gay people there?” I mean, his lingo was larded with the most… There was no basis for it. It was like, “It’s a nice day, I’m glad there are no gay people standing here.” Very, very strange.”

On Bette Midler’s treatment of director Hugh Wilson during “The First Wives Club”:

Bette Midler was such a bitch to him. While he was directing, she would be rolling her eyes, pantomiming with her favorite actors, and she made it very difficult. And he was at his wit’s end. He was actually a very nice man, but she was very unkind to him on that movie.

Pinchot has also starred in the yet to be released film, Finding tatu, which has starlet Mischa Barton in the lead role.

“There was a reference in the script to a fashion photographer being incredibly abusive to Mischa Barton’s character and messing with her ego, which made her do self-destructive things … So I took Mischa Barton aside and said, “Are you aware of this? What are you okay with? Give me an arena.” She said, “If you talk about my ass, it’ll make me cry.” So I did, and I wasn’t loving it – I don’t love that stuff – but she felt that it was important for me, so we did like 20 takes where I made comments about her ass, and then she cried.”

But he was the most affected by Denzel Washington, who he claims caused him to seek counseling after working with him on Courage Under Fire.

“He was really abusive to me and everybody on that movie, and his official explanation was that his character didn’t like me, but it was a dreadful experience. I spent my salary on time with my shrink just for helping me get through it,” he said.

But not everybody got slammed in the inverview. Bronson adores Tom Hanks:

He is a wonderful and genuine and lovely and down-to-earth person. I don’t know how he does that. I first met him when he was doing his spate of not-successful movies. There was a period in the ’80s when he did The Man With One Red Shoe and Joe Versus The Volcano and all those movies that weren’t doing well, and that’s when I first met him, and I would run into him on and off over the years. Then two years ago, I did a play with his wife, and there he was at his absolute height. He’s always been a delightful person, so it’s not really true that big stars need to be driven and repulsive, because he’s anything but.