Cliff Clavin, Rebel Officer

 The original Star Wars trilogy has been on TV a several times lately.  And since it is my
trilogy I've watched it when I can.  The last couple of times I've seen The Empire Strikes Back I've noticed that one of the officers in the hanger scene on Hoth where Leia is worried about Luke and Han looked familiar.  He looked like Cliff Clavin from the TV show Cheers.  So I checked it in IMDB and what the hell do you know, John Ratzenberger was in The Empire Strikes Back!  He played Rebel Force Major Derlin.  Maybe many of you know this but it's news to me.  It both blew my mind and made me laugh at the same time.  Now John Ratzenberger is a fine actor and an excellent voice actor but he will forever be Cliff Clavin to me.  Not that he's completely type cast in my mind but that's the character I will always associate him with because of how much and how long I watched Cheers.  I watched it from when I was a freshman in high school until after I got out of graduate school.

Now, delving a little deeper into his roles he has some pretty impressive SF cred.  He was in both Outland and Superman II.  Beyond that he was in A Bridge Too Far, Gandhi and Reds.  Even though they were small roles, I'm still impressed.