To a certain segment of the population, John Stamos will always be Uncle Jesse. It's a role he played on Full House from 1987 to 1995, then reprised from 2016 to 2020 in Fuller House. He's fine with that, truly, but he also wants to challenge himself. "I just want to play a little more real," he tells Us. "I'm looking for my Breaking Bad." He may not have found his Walter White yet, but he's been flexing his acting muscles in a series of roles that are a far cry from the guitar-toting toddler wrangler we know and love. He just shot the movie Drag, in which he plays a serial killer, and he'll soon appear on season 2 of Apple TV+'s Palm Royale as a "lawyer/gynecologist" alongside such luminaries as Kristen Wiig, Allison Janney and Patti LuPone. "I just pinch myself sometimes," he says. "To be able to still be considered good enough to work with some of the greats - just to be in a scene with these people - that means a lot." It doesn't hurt that Stamos, 62, is as easy on the eyes as ever. He credits his perpetual youthfulness to getting sober a decade ago and raising his 7-year-old son, Billy, with wife Caitlin McHugh, whom he wed in 2018. But it helps too that he seems genuinely happy with his life. He continues to tour with his beloved Beach Boys between film and TV projects, and he authored a bestselling memoir, If You Would Have Told Me, in 2023. Writing the book "gave me some perspective of how lucky I've been and what an incredible life and career I've had," he says. Stamos sat down with Us to revisit his life as a working actor and share the secrets of staying relevant - and handsome - in a world that's always looking for the next big thing. Let's start with your latest Disney Jr. project, Marvel's Iron Man and His Awesome Friends, in which you voice Tony Stark's dad, Howard. You played Tony in Marvel's Spidey and His Amazing Friends. I aged out, apparently! When I played Iron Man, he was a little more high-energy. Howard, he's always pulling dad jokes. Speaking of dad jokes, I consider myself a really good dad - last night was maybe one of my worst parenting moves ever. We came back from Disneyland late, me and Billy, my son, and we were just so tired. I said, "Billy, brush your teeth." I got a toothbrush, and what I thought was toothpaste turned out to be anti-itch cream. He said he brushed and thought it was toothpaste, but it started to taste weirder and weirder. F. SCOTT SCHAFER Good that he kept going. He was like, "I gotta get this done, even if the toothpaste tastes strange." We try as parents. You've been taking more voice roles in projects aimed at kids. Does that have to do with you becoming a father yourself? Yeah, 100 percent. As a parent, you're always trying to impress your kid, and nothing I was doing was working. He used to watch Mickey Mouse Funhouse, so I just started asking around, "Can I do a voice on there?" I did this salty Irish pirate on there, and he loved that. And then he started getting to Marvel, so I started doing more of the Marvel stuff. I just hit up all my friends at Disney and go, "Can I do some more voices, please?" John Stamos Still Has No Regrets About 'Brutally Honest' Memoir Will he watch the new show? Oh, yeah. We'll watch it today. He watches Full House, but mainly to mock me. I say, "Billy, put your Legos away." He goes, "You got it, dude." He likes to do the catchphrases right back at me. Has fatherhood affected your career choices in other ways? I just did a horror movie [Drag, produced by Danny DeVito], where I play a serial killer, and it was maybe one of the darkest, weirdest roles I've ever taken. So in that case, no. I love actors. ... We take what we can get. But I did this movie and [Billy] won't ever see it, I hope. I did this last season of Palm Royale ... he asked me the other day, "Dad, can I watch Palm Royale?" I'm like, "No, no, I don't think so." I've done a lot of television and entertainment stuff for him. I'm in the second or third quarter, so I really want to step up. John Nacion/WireImage Does he understand that what you do is different from what a lot of his friends' parents probably do? He handles it really well. He understands that I do something different. We were on vacation with - not to drop names - but Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson. And they were like, "Just make sure he knows that that's your job. ... This is your family." And then people come up and ask for pictures. But he kind of gets into it. Yesterday he was like, "Dad, Dad, Dad, those people want a picture over there." What he loves most is the Beach Boys tour. His new thing is to sit behind me the whole time and talk to me about mundane things, and I'm playing in front of 10, 15,000 people. "Dad, Rory is out there, my friend Rory!" He likes to come onstage, and so he was sort of banging on the tambourine. I said, "If you're going to come onstage, you have to play." So he started taking drum lessons, and he studied the tambourine part on "Good Vibrations," and he plays it perfectly.