Chicago-raised actor Dan Castellaneta has one of the most recognizable voices in Hollywood—here’s a hint: “Mmm…doughnuts”—but the man does get gigs beyond the animated streets of Springfield, Undisclosed State. He’s had cameos in Entourage, Veronica Mars and I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With (from Chi-town homeboy Jeff Garlin). And his stage work brings him to Chicago Wednesday 12 to December 16 in a guest spot with The Bicycle Men, a twisted comic tale of a cyclist’s journey through France. Still, it’s hard to look at Castellaneta and not see yellow, so we wondered how much Homer there is in him. Turns out he’s got his own food vices.

How involved were you in developing Homer’s character?
Not really, other than what I did when we were initially doing the show. Whatever I did with the voice kind of influenced them in terms of where the character was. When the show started, the writers sat down and said Homer’s got to be Bart’s foil, his nemesis. He’s got to be a little dumb for Bart to get away with as much as Bart does. Marge is the enabler, but at the same time she’s the glue that keeps the family together. Lisa is the overlooked middle child, Bart is the brat and Maggie is the silent comedy presence, the Harpo if you will, of the family.

Has any of that changed over the years?
They’ve pretty much stayed the same, [although] Homer’s gotten more childish and into Bart’s pranks, and gets more angry at irrational things than he probably should as
a father.

Doesn’t that make Homer more of a caricature than a character?
Well, when we first started, the show had more of a reality base. I think around the fifth or sixth season, it started to go into more of a crazy direction. One thing they keep about Homer is that he still loves his family, even though he has gone stupid to absurd lengths. The guys that write this show are iconoclasts, so as soon as The Simpsons became an established thing, they had the inclination to reinvent it.

Has The Simpsons taken over your life?
We record it on a Monday usually, and we go from 10am to about 3pm, and I come back and do pickup lines for an hour. I have to do it year-round but I don’t do it everyday. I get a hiatus period after Thanksgiving up to the beginning of March.

That’s…quite a nice little break.
It is. I’m not subjected to it all the time. Besides, I enjoy the show. It makes me laugh. It’s always interesting, it’s always surprising. And the fact that I don’t do it everyday: To me, it’s not enough. I’ll keep doing it until I shuffle off this mortal coil.

What’s the dream project you hope to land someday?
I’d love to be on a show that I helped create or write. My wife and I write together. We’ve written a musical and are looking for a composer to do music for it. We write plays. We do treatments for TV shows and pitch them around, and so far we haven’t gotten a bite on any of them.

Do you two ever fight over creative differences?
[Laughs] For years. I wrote a note on a Post-it next to the computer that says, “Be nice.” I’ve learned to let go and not be so emphatic about it or abrasive. I tend to get a little bit demonstrative. There have been times where I get angry and I have to stop.

Sounds like you’ve got some Homer in you. What about food? Any Homer-like weaknesses?
It’s all the cookies people send during Christmas. They’re everywhere you look. My wife has no problem with it. She’ll say, “Can’t we keep it around for guests?” And I just want to throw them away. I don’t have great willpower.

Ever tried using Homer’s voice to get laid?
[Laughs] No. It would probably antagonize my wife if I used it to get something from her or, of course, from someone else.

I’m not condoning that, by the way. What about using it to screw with drunks at the Wiener’s Circle?
No way. I don’t want drunk people to know I’m Homer. “Ah, do some more.” Or, if I talked like Barney, [In Barney voice] “Hey you guys!” then I’d have drunken friends at all hours of the day.

Ride with Castellaneta and the Bicycle Men Wednesday 12 at the Lakeshore Theater. See Comedy.