Ted McGinley has heard every joke about being “the patron saint of jumping the shark,” but the 67-year-old actor is too busy cashing residual checks—some literally for a penny—and savoring life with his wife of 32 years, actress Gigi Rice, to worry about old punchlines. In a candid conversation with Page Six, the Shrinking star explained how a rock-solid home base and an almost compulsive habit of saving money have insulated him from the wild swings of a career that began in the late 1970s.
From Paper Routes to the Pacific Ocean: The Early Hustle
Long before McGinley was trading barbs with Ed O’Neill on Married… with Children, he was a third-grader in Newport Beach pushing a lawn-mower and folding newspapers. “I’ve worked since I was eight,” he says. “Every quarter I earned went straight into a coffee can.” That Depression-era mindset, learned from parents who weathered the 1930s, stuck. When he booked a small part on Happy Days in 1980, he still kept the day job at a sporting-goods store “just in case the whole acting thing was a fluke.”
The fluke kept snowballing. Cast as the villainous jock Stan Gable in 1984’s Revenge of the Nerds, McGinley suddenly found himself on a studio lot being offered a seven-year deal by ABC. “I didn’t even have an agent,” he laughs. “I called my mom and she said, ‘Just don’t spend it all on pizza.’” He didn’t. Instead, he bought a modest two-bedroom house in Studio City and rented out the back unit, a move that would later provide mortgage relief during slow years.
Why Residual Checks for a Penny Still Matter
Thanks to reruns on three continents, McGinley still receives quarterly statements from SAG-AFTRA. “I’ve gotten checks for one cent, two cents, four cents,” he shrugs. “Anything four cents and over gets deposited. The penny ones are in a drawer—my wife says they’re art.” Those micro-payments add up; the long tail of syndication has paid for two college educations and a kitchen remodel. “People assume actors are rolling in it, but most of us are small-business owners with very irregular cash flow. Residuals smooth the curve.”
Here are the shows that keep the mailbox humming:
- Happy Days – still airing on MeTV and in Germany
- The Love Boat – streaming on Paramount+ internationally
- Dynasty – a surprise hit on Amazon Prime Video in India
- Married… with Children – 285 episodes in perpetual rotation
- Hope & Faith – cable reruns at 2 a.m. “but I’ll take it,” he jokes
Family as the Real Safety Net
McGinley met Gigi Rice on the set of the short-lived 1991 sitcom The Last Frontier. Both had been burned by Hollywood relationships and agreed to keep things platonic. “We were the only two people who didn’t want to date,” he grins. Three decades, two sons, and a golden retriever later, they still schedule Tuesday-night bowling and Sunday-morning farmers-market runs. “We live in the same house we bought in ’92. The kitchen table is from a Pasadena thrift store. Nobody in my family cares about the business, and that’s the healthiest thing possible.”
When Shrinking writers threatened to kill off his character this season—he plays a hospitalized country-club pal of Harrison Ford’s therapist—McGinley texted show-runner Bill Lawrence: “Please don’t break my mother’s heart. She just learned how to stream.” The producers rewrote the arc, keeping him alive and golfing. “I’ve been fired off shows before, but this time I had home equity and a wife who still laughs at my jokes. That’s freedom.”
The Thriftiness Playbook
McGinley’s definition of “splurging” is buying a new pair of running shoes after 600 miles. He drives a 2013 Prius with 180,000 miles, clips digital coupons, and insists the family eat at home five nights a week. “My kids think I’m cheap until they see their college loan statements are zero,” he says. The couple’s joint account automatically skims 25 percent of every paycheck into index funds; another 10 percent goes to a charitable donor-advised fund that supports arts education in public schools.
That discipline once allowed him to walk away from a lucrative but soul-numbing sitcom in 2003. “I told my agent, ‘I’d rather be broke than bored.’ We tightened the belt, booked regional theater, and I ended up doing Dancing with the Stars for the fun of it.” The stint revived his mainstream profile and led to a recurring part on Hope & Faith, proving that frug
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