John Ratzenberger on 'Village Barbershop,' Pixar and more

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His name might not be familiar at first. But John Ratzenberger can't walk down any street in the United States without someone recognizing him as Cliff, the know-it-all mailman who sat at the bar where everyone knows your name for 11 years on the hit TV series "Cheers."Ratzenberger, in a recent phone interview from his home north of Los Angeles, admitted that it's not that easy going from a bar where everyone knows your name to the world at large, where everyone knows who you are when they see your face.That 's why, he said, he spends a lot of time sailing his boat, often along the East Coast. "I grew up in Connecticut," said the 61-year-old Bridgeport native, "so at every opportunity I go back there to visit friends," adding that "you can take the boy out of New England, but you can't take New England out of the boy."Meanwhile, he's proud of his most recent film, "The Village Barbershop." Written and directed by Chris Ford, the independently produced flick centers on a man (played by Ratzenberger) haunted by the past and in danger of losing his barbershop -- until a pretty drifter comes into his life.It is set in Reno, Nev., with its glittering casinos, although the shop itself was actually in downtown Napa, Calif. The film recently won the Audience Choice Award at the Cinequest Festival in San Jose, Calif., as well as a Best Actress award for co-star Shelly Cole.Ratzenberger likes the plot "because it's a real-life story. It's a small story. It's not about car crashes and multimillion-dollar sets. But it's a story about everyday heroism." He plays Art, a man whose life is adrift, "but then, as sometimes happens, an angel flies in to give him a kick in the pants."It's a film about personal responsibilities; that you can't blame other people for where you are in life."It's about taking responsibility for your life."He said the film "is that movie that people are complaining Hollywood doesn't make anymore."Ratzenberger's career, post-"Cheers," has been one of constant activity, both in front of the camera on TV shows and behind it, directing them. He even enjoyed a run on ABC's "Dancing With the Stars" in the spring of 2007.Despite the fact that many people might not recognize his name, Ratzenberger has become something of a good-luck mascot for Pixar Studios, having worked on every one of their feature films, beginning with 1995's "Toy Story" and continuing right through to the currently-in-theaters "WALL-E," in which he voices a human character, and the currently-in-production "Toy Story 3," where for the third time he voices Hamm, the piggy bank.Because of his work on the Pixar films and his live-action roles in "Superman" and "The Empire Strikes Back," where he was a major in the rebel air force -- and has his own action figure to prove it -- Ratzenberger said he recently discovered that he is "No. 3 on the list of actors who've been in the biggest moneymaking films of all time."And how did he become the Pixar mascot?He dates it back to the first "Toy Story" film, when Pixar was a company no one had heard of and was working out of a warehouse on the outskirts of San Francisco."I think," he said with a laugh, "it might be because afterwards I hung around and they let me help load their equipment in the rental van."(E-mail Michael Janusonis at mjanuson(at)projo.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)