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MOVIES

Denis Leary's "secret wish"

By Lorrie Lynch

Denis Leary skewers much about celebrity in his book "Why We Suck: A Feel-Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid," but he doesn't touch stars who voice animated characters. The actor, comedian and now best-selling author is the voice of Diego the saber-toothed tiger in the "Ice Age" movies, including the third, "Dawn of the Dinosaurs," coming July 1. It's a gig that once made him cool to his two kids, but now that they're in high school and college -- not so much. Still, "I enjoy it," he says. "It's a gigantic project."

To hear Leary's comedy act onstage, you would never think about that cartoon tiger. Nor would you think that he is a good Irish Catholic from Worcester, Mass. Profanity tumbles out of his mouth as naturally as his breath, but the bits about what's right and wrong with the world "come from my parents," Leary says, "mostly my mom, because she was in the kitchen with the rule book."

A social commentator from the beginning of his career, Leary, 51, co-created "Rescue Me," the FX drama about New York firefighters that first aired in 2004. Leary plays Tommy Gavin, a mess of a man who is much less at ease in the world than Leary, but both are defined by their families.

"His parents had a wonderful marriage, and his great family is one of the many things that attracted me to him," says Leary's wife, Ann, a writer.

Leary tells stories about growing up in "a house full of laughs," the most entertaining of which have to do with his parents' no-nonsense way of raising kids. Let's just say there was no worrying about children's self-esteem in their house. The family politics were "Jack Kennedy liberal," but Leary says his mom disdained political correctness. "I'm like my mother," says Leary, who makes his anti-PC stance clear in all of his work, from "Rescue Me" to the book, for which he now plans to write a sequel.

He also must consider how to end "Rescue Me." He knows there will be a 2010 season: "We'll go into it with the idea that this might be the last, and we'll see how it feels." But he admits he has a "secret wish" to finish in 2011, the 10th anniversary year of 9/11.