Jason Alexander will forever be known as George Costanza, and that's okay by him.

George Costanza's bluffing skills must be sublime.

"I'm not one of those guys who turns into a sheet of ice when I play poker," said Jason Alexander, who portrayed George Costanza in the classic sitcom Seinfeld. Alexander was on the phone recently from Las Vegas, where he was competing in one of those big-time poker tournaments that currently intrigue him.

"If anything, I go the other way," Alexander added. "I give my opponents too much to read."

Alexander -- who will be back in Canada later this month for an appearance at Toronto's Just For Laughs festival -- said if anyone should understand the dangers of gambling, it's him.

"My dad was a horse guy and I was with him the last day he ever made a bet," said Alexander, 48. "He couldn't ever remember dreams, but he woke up one day and said, 'My mom came to me in a dream and told me, the number six, the number six.'

"So we went out to the Meadowlands in New Jersey, and he just blindly put $6,000, which he really didn't have, on the No. 6 horse in the sixth race. And long story short, the horse literally dropped dead."

Well, that ominous occurrence notwithstanding, Alexander has become fascinated by the world of poker. And equally surprising to him, he also has developed a taste for performing standup comedy in recent years, despite the fact he had sworn he never would go down such a brutal road.

A common career path for comedic actors goes like this: Standup; TV; theatre. Alexander has done exactly the opposite.

"Destructive is what it is," Alexander said with a laugh. "I'm on a downward spiral. I don't know who's running my career, but we need to have a talk."

That said -- and despite his high-profile failures to jump-start another sitcom -- Alexander now embraces the Seinfeld legacy, rather than fighting against it.

"Bill Shatner and I have become very friendly and he confided to me that one of the greatest mistakes he made in his life was that, because Star Trek happened at a relatively young age for him as well, he got to a place where he resented it," Alexander said. "It took him a long time to make peace with the fact he had created something that was bigger than anything else he could do with his life.

"He told me, 'We breathe very rarefied air when we get a piece of material like that, and you can't do anything but embrace it.' I really heard him.

"Even 10 years after Seinfeld went off the air, it still brings me endless joy. Anywhere I travel in the world, where I assume I'm going to be anonymous, people come pouring out, 'George, George, George.' And it's not only recognition, it's joyful recognition."

Say what you want about the frivolity of entertainment, but it seems to speak to a specific human need.

"That certainly has been my learning curve with it, yeah," said Jason Alexander, a.k.a. George Costanza.

And he wasn't bluffing.

bill.harris@sunmedia.ca