John Goodman Talks Shoplifting, Paralyzing Stage Fright And the Fate of 'The Conners'

John Goodman tried to shoplift as a teenager and it didn't go so well, to say the least.

While appearing on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" Friday night, the "Roseanne" star spoke about his upbringings in Missouri and how he came into show business. When the late-night host asked Goodman if he ever got "in trouble" as a kid, the actor told a funny story of a failed attempt to steal a hat at a store when he was 14.

"I got caught shoplifting once," Goodman recalled. "I saw a hat, I lost. I said, 'This hat is so cool...I got to have it.' So I grabbed it, tore the price tag out and I started strolling, strolling towards the front door."

"Right when I got to the front door, my spidey sense saw somebody behind me coming up on me," he continued. "So I turned around started walking back. And [a man] goes, 'Where you going with that?' and I said, 'Oh, to the cash register.'"

"By the time they stopped grilling me -- they believed me -- but they had already called my mother, who arrived on the bus with a bunch of tears [in her eyes]," he added. "And it really hurt her...I couldn't get her to believe that I didn't mean to steal it."

After hearing the story, Colbert joked in response, "And so your life was ruined and you had to go into acting."

While speaking about the early stages of his career, Goodman recalled once having stage fright so "paralyzing" he planned to admit to the audience that he had forgotten his lines.

"What's your worst experience you've had on stage?" Colbert asked.

"I was doing a play called 'Big River' in '85," Goodman said. "For a week straight, every time I was going to make my entrance, I could never remember my first line and then I went into a panic."

"I'd come out and [I'd say] 'I'm so sorry ladies and gentleman, I can't remember this dialogue. Please forgive me," he continued. "And as soon as I opened my mouth, the dialogue came out...But it was paralyzing stage fright.

"You were literally going to confess to the audience?" Colbert asked and Goodman joked in reply, "I had no choice, I'm not up here loitering."

Goodman's "Roseanne" spinoff, "The Conners," just had its Season 1 finale, and it seems that Goodman knows as much about the fate of the show as we do.

"They haven't told us yet," he said. "I'm waiting to find out what's going to happen. They usually tell us, like last year it was the second show they said, 'You're gonna get picked up again.' And they're just [like], 'We might tell you, we might not."

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