The Cheers Alum Who Made An Appearance In Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back
John Ratzenberger's acting career is riddled with the kind of trivia-fodder that would delight his "Cheers" character, Cliff Clavin. Aside from his sitcom stardom, the actor is best known as Pixar's good-luck charm (he appears in the animation studio's first 23 features) and, pre-"Cheers," as a master of the blink-and-miss-it walk-on role. Settle in to watch films as disparate as Richard Donner's "Superman," Kevin Connor's "Motel Hell," or Warren Beatty's "Reds," and you'll spy Ratzenberg at some point.
With his amusingly bushy mustache and awkward bearing, Ratzenberger was never going to be a leading man. He's a born character actor, and could've very well been a member of the "that guy" all-stars with Dick Miller, Stephen Tobolowsky, and James Rebhorn, had he not found television immortality as everyone's favorite know-some-of-it-all mail carrier. He's certainly not upset about how his career shook out, but his "Cheers" success has turned his early appearances into "Hey, it's Cliff!" distractions. And there's not a more jarring example of this than his brief turn in "Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back."
The ballad of Major Bren Derlin
If you're any kind of "Star Wars" fan, you can probably quote John Ratzenberger's bad-news delivery to Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia. His big scene arrives when his character, Major Bren Derlin, informs Leia that the Rebel Alliance must close their Hoth base's shield doors even though Luke Skywalker and Han Solo have yet to return (due to the former's unfortunate run-in with a nasty Wampa).
In an interview with John Morton (aka Dak, Luke's T-47 airspeeder co-pilot), Ratzenberger discussed his memories of shooting the first "Star Wars" sequel. Amusingly, he was most impressed by his parking space on the studio lot in London. And you would be, too. According to Ratzenberger:
"I somehow got a parking space next to Kermit the Frog. It was Jim Henson's space, with this Kermit the Frog sign. So I took a photo of it and sent it to my mom with a caption that read, 'Look, Mom. I made it. I got a parking space next to Kermit the Frog.'"
Ratzenberger confessed that he nursed a crush on Fisher, but was too embarrassed to ask her back to his vermin-ridden flat. Other than that, he was fascinated by the "film-set infrastructures." As he explained to Morton:
"I remember being fascinated by the graduated sizes and perspective on the sets. And how they put shorter people and kids in the uniforms and placed them in the distance to give the idea that these sets had more depth than they really did."
Anything else? "My uniform was cool," said Ratzenberger. That it was. Sartorially, we might just prefer it to his USPS raiment. But the only reason you're reading this is because he filled that uniform out with endearingly daft pomposity. As for Major Derlin, he was never heard from again.