1. Eddie the dog, Frasier

1. Eddie the dog, Frasier

When Frasier raced to the front of the sitcom pack in 1993, its breakout character was the one member of the Crane family who never needed a witty retort to score a laugh. Moose, the Jack Russell terrier who played family dog Eddie, landed on the cover of Entertainment Weekly and earned glowing accolades from his human co-stars. (“He’s probably the most disciplined cast member,” John Mahoney said, and Jane Leeves raved, “He’s amazing, the things he can do.”) But one voice is conspicuously absent from that EW feature: the actor most frequently upstaged by the deadpan dog. “I do draw the line when somebody says, ‘Oh, he’s such a good little actor,’” Kelsey Grammer told Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales prior to Frasier’s second season. The quotes about Moose in the Post profile could be read as a peevish sitcom star blowing off steam, but in Shales’ telling, it sounds like there’s real annoyance at work. Shales describes Grammer “slamming his hand on the table” hard enough to jiggle a bowl of guacamole as he proclaims, “That’s it! He’s not an actor, he’s a dog!” Perhaps Grammer simply objected to the accommodations the show had to make for Moose. Episodes featuring the canine reportedly took twice as long to shoot as those without him, and according to BBC News’ 2006 obituary, coaxing Moose into a crowd-pleasing nuzzle required a smear of liver pate behind an actor’s ear. [Erik Adams]