Everybody Loves Raymond creator Phil Rosenthal said that Frank Barone and Peter Boyle were polar opposites

Fans of Every­body Loves Ray­mond know him as the gruff, irri­ta­ble Frank Barone, but in real life, Peter Boyle was a far cry from the char­ac­ter he made famous. Cre­ator Phil Rosen­thal even described them as “polar oppo­sites.”

“Peter is quite eru­dite and for­ward-think­ing,” Rosen­thal explained. “In many ways, he’s a child of the ‘60s. The best man at his wed­ding was John Lennon. He’s play­ing Frank Barone, but he’s noth­ing like Frank Barone, and that makes his per­for­mance even more impres­sive.”

Boyle’s ear­ly career wasn’t easy. “It was tough,” he recalled in an inter­view with Knight Rid­der News­pa­pers. “I would work at dif­fer­ent jobs—the post office, wait­er, office temp, maitre d’—and spend a lot of time in act­ing class and going to audi­tions.”

Even­tu­al­ly, Boyle found his niche play­ing the bad-tem­pered, blue-col­lar type. “I’ve been doing this character—angry blue-col­lar guy—so many times in dif­fer­ent ver­sions that it’s real­ly easy for me,” he admit­ted. Yet his abil­i­ty to embody these roles so con­vinc­ing­ly often led to type­cast­ing. “It’s very hard if you try to do dif­fer­ent things,” Boyle said, “because the busi­ness wants to put you in one spot. Peo­ple don’t believe in act­ing.”

Despite this, Boyle’s warmth and charm off-screen made him beloved by col­leagues and fans alike. It’s a tes­ta­ment to his skill that he could make a lov­able cur­mud­geon like Frank Barone feel so real, while remain­ing a gen­uine­ly kind and genial per­son behind the scenes.