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In his 48 years of screen appearances -- and that doesn't even count his years as a Broadway chorus boy -- Elliott Gould has made a big impression on a lot of viewers. Best known to film fans as the star of "MASH" and TV fans as Monica and Ross' dad on "Friends," Gould recently accepted the Freedom of Expression Award from the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.

When he sat down to talk with the Weekly, the Oscar-nominated actor effortlessly proved his freedom of expression. The man has the gift of gab, whether it's name-dropping famous showbiz friends and colleagues (or his new film "Ruby Sparks"), or offering up hard-won life lessons from years of career ups and downs.

Gould accepted his festival honor at a San Francisco screening of the comedy "Dorfman," which also stars Sara Rue of TV's "Less Than Perfect." The film plays Aug. 1 at the CineArts theater at Palo Alto Square as part of the festival's Peninsula screenings.

"I'm really happy with a couple of the scenes, one in particular," Gould says. "With my daughter -- a beautiful scene which is very meaningful to me."

Over an hour of chat, Gould tells tales from his infancy ("I'm 14 months old. And I was on the boardwalk of Far Rockaway...") to his heyday to a few weeks ago, when he chaired the International Feature Competition Jury at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. He also launches into the "To be or not to be" soliloquy from "Hamlet," decries TV and expresses love for his iPod. At one point, he notes, "The Dalai Lama is a great friend of mine -- even though we haven't met."

That's Gould: hard to keep up with, playful and determinedly philosophical. "My acting fundamentally is: I love to play," he says. "There will always be a child in my heart. And ... this child loves to play."

Gould's personal Zen extends to identifying with vegetables: "I believe that each of us is meant to be one-of-a-kind. But taking into consideration the ego and the vanity of this species of ours, I believe that a zucchini is also one-of-a-kind, and that there's nothing more intelligent than vegetation, because it simply is, and that's all life is about: being." (He later jokes of "being a circumcised zucchini" himself.)

One minute, Gould recalls Groucho Marx watching him screw in a lightbulb and remarking, "That's the best acting I've ever seen you do." ("The best review I will ever have," Gould says.)

The next minute he lays down some potentially world-changing truth: "I believe there's nothing of value other than what we have to share. And it's one thing to share goodness and accomplishment. It's another thing to share a problem. And ... once people are willing and capable of communicating directly like this, we can see that no one of us can have a problem that one of us didn't have before." That's one insightful zucchini, coming to a theater near you.

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