Stamos credits his older age with being a successful father
Actor John Stamos may be best known for Full House, where he played fun-loving Uncle Jesse, but his biggest role comes as dad to four-year-old son Billy.
“I’m very grateful to the gods or to the universe or whatever that I’m an older father. I couldn’t have handled it earlier,” Stamos told TODAY Parents. “I’ve wanted kids my whole life. I figured, ‘I can’t wait to be a father, I’ve been a TV father,’ but it’s a whole different ballgame. It’s the greatest blessing of my life. I couldn’t imagine my life without him, but it is challenging to do it right.”
He and his wife, Caitlin McHugh, said they both feel lucky to have extra help when they need it as working parents, but said it takes all of their effort to be the kind of parents they want to be for Billy.
“It just takes so much to be a good parent,” he said. “It’s about sacrifice, it’s an enormous amount of love, an enormous amount of patience, common sense, teaching them values and what’s right and wrong… and everything’s expensive.”
Part of Stamos’ future work involves roles that finally make him popular in the eyes of his son. “I’ve been trying to get Billy to think I was cool since he was two months old,” he said. Turns out, all he needed to do was lend his voice to a show geared towards his target audience.
Stamos will be the voice behind two characters on Disney Junior: first, the pirate Salty Bones on Disney’s Mickey Mouse Funhouse: Pirate Adventure, a special debuting in August. The second— voicing Iron Man in the series Marvel’s Spidey and his Amazing Friends. “Now he thinks I’m cool. Now he runs around telling everyone, ‘My dad’s going to be on ‘Spidey!'” Stamos said. “Finally!”
Stamos also admitted his success as a father comes from being older, saying he “would not have been mature enough” to raise Billy the way he does now when he was younger. “I am so grateful that I’m settled, and I’m cool, and I’m sober, and I’m happy with myself,” he said. “I’m happy with my wife, my wife is content, too, and she’s confident. We’re at a place in our life where we should have eight kids.”
The big question then becomes, will they? “We want to,” he said. “We should.”
