Scaly and reeking of fish from his day job in a sea food processing plant, Ryan Stiles spent his nights during summer vacations from school working third-rate comedy clubs and introducing ancient strippers in burlesque houses.
     Instantly enamored with show business, the 17-year-old student soon obtained false I.D. cards to acquire work permits and dropped out of his Vancouver high school in 1976 to carve out a comedy career rather than gut fish for a living. The next step was 10 long years in the hinterlands learning the art and craft of standup comedy before often indifferent and sometimes hostile audiences.
     "It was invaluable experience playing sleazy bars and tired strip joints," says the lanky, 6-foot-5, Stiles, 41, now highly visible as one of the improv meisters on "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" and as Lewis, the hapless janitor, on "The Drew Carey Show." "I remember playing a rough saloon at Whistler Mountain before it became a full-fledged ski resort. The place was jammed with French lumberjacks throwing beer cans because they closed down the pool tables during my performances."
     Canada is a unique proving ground for comedians due to a number of factors, including extreme weather conditions. "In the winter, with blizzards howling, it's not unusual to have one or two people show up at a club -- to keep warm," he explains. "One stormy night in Toronto we had a honeymoon couple in a club seating 300, and they didn't see, hear or care about anything we did. And you can't find a worse crowd than in a strip club," Stiles continues. "They are there for the naked ladies, not your lame jokes and introductions. After a while, I developed the attitude that I should go on stage and have fun rather than worry about what the audiences thought about me -- it has helped me in everything I've done from that point on."
     The biggest break in Stiles' early career was meeting Pat McDonald, a graphic artist moonlighting as a waitress in a Vancouver comedy club. The ice breaker was buying her a drink on a miserable, stormy night to cheer her up after a largely empty house left her with 30 cents in tips.
     They lived together for 10 years before getting married in 1989 and became the devoted parents of daughter Mackenzie, 8, and son Sam, 6. Life is very good as their new Los Angeles home sports a swimming pool.
     When time permits, which isn't very often when his professional schedule includes two primetime television shows, Stiles whisks his family off to a four-acre mini-ranch in Washington state. "It was easy to move back and forth until the kids were ready for school," he says, "then we had some hard choices to make. Ultimately, we didn't want to put the children in private schools and found good public schools in L.A. instead."
     The youngest of five children born in Seattle to Canadian parents, Stiles grew up in a modest but loving environment provided by his mother, a homemaker, and his father, a supervisor at a Vancouver-based fish processing plant. "I am an American citizen, but was a landed immigrant in Canada for a number of years," he explains. "But my wife's Canadian, so if there's ever a big war, we can still get in up there. Let's hope there's no weekend war between the U.S. and Canada."
     With the huge financial burden of raising five children, the latex-faced actor suspects that his parents were overly upset when he announced his withdrawal from Richmond High School to take a stab at financial independence. "They were very thrilled because they were finally able to spend my college fund," he jokes. "Actually, it was hard on them the first eight or nine years, knowing I was making about $30 a gig. They didn't relax until I was able to make a little money."
     While Stiles slugged it out in the trenches, his four siblings -- evenly split between Seattle and Vancouver -- settled into sensible careers ranging from housewife to landscape architect. He made his own career quantum leap in 1986, when he auditioned at the Vancouver World's Fair for a spot in the famed Canadian improv ensemble Second City. After performing with the troupe in British Columbia, he spent another four years honing his improvisational skills at their clubs in Toronto and Los Angeles with Mike Myers and the gang..
     The Second City training paid off big time in 1989, when he was picked to perform in the British improvisational series "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" hosted by Clive Anderson and executive produced by Dan Patterson.
     Suddenly, the man who absolutely hates to fly was racking up frequent flyer miles to London once a year -- for 10 years -- to tape segments of the show. The U.K.-version of "Line" is currently on hold, but Stiles is set to start the third season of the U.S. version of "Line" with Drew Carey in the catbird seat.
     As it was Stiles' idea to import "Line" and worked to bring Patterson and Carey together, he now serves as both a star and an executive producer for the low-budget/high-profit improv show. "The fake game show formats of the two shows were virtually identical," he explains. "The only difference was that the winner of the American version gets to do a game with Drew at the end of the show. In Britain, whoever won got to read the credits at the end."
     So far, toiling on "The Drew Carey Show" has been a great party with close friends, according to the multi-talented actor-comedian who relishes his role as Lewis, the elusive janitor at mysterious Drug Co Pharmaceutical. "I try not to think about my character too hard and try to have fun with him instead," says Stiles. "I don't try to psychoanalyze any character I play and don't care about his back story, like some actors do. I'm in no need of a therapist until I start stalking myself."
     Moving to Hollywood 10 years ago was the smartest move Stiles ever made as he quickly established himself with guest shots on a raft of sitcom, including "Parker Lewis Can't Lose," "The John Larroquette Show" and "Mad About You" during the Lisa Kudrow era. When film roles ("Hot Shots," "Hot Shots, Part Deux") slowed down, he turned to television commercials. He is still remembered fondly for his "one-man wave" spot for Nike during the 1994-95 Major League baseball strike.      Doing "Drew Carey" on weekdays and "Line" on weekends during the television season, the blond and green-eyed performer feels no particular need to chase down parts in movies during his hiatus. "It takes me a week after wrapping the two shows to wind down," he says. "I used to play a lot of golf, but I have a bad back now and spend most of my free time fixing things around the house, sitting around the pool or swimming with the kids."