John Ratzenberger

John Ratzenberger began his career while living in London in the 1970s, picking up small parts in films shooting in Britain: a rebel officer in The Empire Strikes Back, a controller in Superman II, a worker in the mining colony of Outland. Character work, almost no lines, nothing that suggested what was coming.

The turn was Cheers, where he created the part he ended up playing. Cliff Clavin, the know-it-all mailman, ran eleven seasons and brought two Primetime Emmy nominations, and the character proved durable enough to follow him into The Tortellis, an episode of Wings and an episode of Frasier. It is a very specific comic instrument: the confident wrong answer, delivered by a man who has never once suspected he might be wrong.

Then Pixar. He voiced Hamm in Toy Story in 1995 and has turned up in essentially every Pixar feature since, which is why he appears in the credits of films with nothing else in common: the Yeti in Monsters, Inc., the Underminer in The Incredibles, Mack in Cars, P.T. Flea in A Bug's Life, the school of fish in Finding Nemo, Fritz in Inside Out. Most are two or three scenes. The studio treats him as a good-luck charm and audiences treat it as a game, which adds up to an unusual sort of stardom: enormous box office totals, near-total anonymity inside the roles.

Away from acting he has campaigned for American manufacturing and entrepreneurship, and hosted the documentary series Made in America from 2004 to 2008.