John Ratzenberger Quotes

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  • Actor
  • born 1947
  • 55 quotes

John Ratzenberger, an actor (born 1947), is quoted 55 times on QuoteForever. The subjects that come up most often are Stars, War, People and Humor.

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You'll be tested every single day.

You've got to write for your audience.

I always played a soldier, sailor, or policemen.

A farce, or slapstick humor, does well universally.

I've turned down projects based on raunchiness before.

Hollywood has lost touch with their audience a long time ago.

Diabetes affects my family. One of my kids is affected by it.

There are technologies you couldn't predict at all when I started.

I'd never been to acting school, so I never thought I'd get this far.

I have been raising money for the past 14 years for diabetes research.

Before 1972, no actors got residuals. They just got paid. No residuals.

Find people who share your values, and you'll conquer the world together.

When I go to the garage to pick up my clubs, I clean the spider webs off.

I come from Bridgeport, Connecticut and have friends I grew up with there.

So many people aren't ready for Hollywood - professionally or practically.

I started improvising the Cliff character, based on someone I grew up with.

From what I can see, too many kids don't learn pride in their country anymore.

I never went to drama school, so that was more like I was getting away with it.

I'm still really into set design and construction when I do films. I notice that stuff.

So many actors have sheer guts, will, and determination; they just need some preparation.

I don't know that I ever did see Star Wars as any different. I was certainly proud that I did it.

On my visits back home, if they saw that I was getting a big head, they'd let me know right away.

But from what I can see all around me today, that America is fading fast, if it's not already gone.

In L.A., though, people get off busses calling themselves actors, so many are really not professionals.

Sure, the comedians who swear or use scatological humor can get laughs, but they're uncomfortable laughs.

[At Conventions] they give me all the photos to sign. Star Wars, Superman. And Hammy the Pig is right up there.

In fact, my son learned his first swear word from E.T. at age five. The way I look at it, E.T. stole a bit of my son's childhood.

I mean, Cheers [from the Star Wars] was just a job while we were doing it. All of us were really only hustling to pay the rent, weren't we.

I'm concerned about the insidious influence of the media's bad messages that undermine the lessons parents try to instill in their sons and daughters.

It appalls me that the people who decide what Americans will be watching on the tube have never been to the United States. Not the real United States.

Two days later I got a call that they wanted to try out the character for seven episodes. Eleven years and 22 Emmys later, Cliff was still sitting at that bar.

After all, at end of the day, when you're breathing your last, it's not your producer, director, or cast mates by your bedside; it's your children. Keep that in mind.

Really, improv is all about creating for what's around you, in the moment, so it fits in a way that you can't see the seams. It's like a great jazz combo. I still do it.

Calvin: I'm a genius, but I'm a misunderstood genius. Hobbes: What's misunderstood about you? Calvin: Nobody thinks I'm a genius. Corfu? It's just a poor man's Pensacola.

My uniform [in Star Wars] was cool. Not much else I can think of at the moment. You know, you don't know the enormity of these kinds of films until well after you're done.

I speak to women's groups, Chambers of Commerce, manufacturing organizations. Just did the Mike Huckabee Show. I do about two speaking engagements a month. I still enjoy travelling.

There are times over different projects when I've asked the writers why people are swearing for no good reason. I tell them that it would be funnier if there weren't these swear words.

Maybe, I got a sense when [Star Wars] came out, and there were always these lines around the block. We didn't understand the popularity of Cheers until maybe five years into the series.

I look at the calendar. If it's a nice place, I go, like I did in London when it came to choosing to do a film. I always choose the best locations. New Orleans. That's fun. I'm available. Let's go.

The last thing on my mind was to be an actor, but I had a crush on a cute girl in the drama department, so the best thing for me to do was audition, help out, do carpentry, whatever it took to get me on that project.

I wrote another wrestling film script. And we finished the shooting [with Lloyd Phillips]. But Henry Winkler came out with his own wrestling film, which did poorly. So the studios passed on ours, and it never got released.

I remember being fascinated by the graduated sizes and perspective on the sets [of Star Wars]. 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.

What I've learned from the Pixar guys is 'If you work for the love of what you're doing, it's always going to come out right.' Cause if you're working for a paycheck then it's not going to work in the long run; it's not going to feed your heart and soul.

The pollution they produce, market, sell, and show to billions around the world is at its core contemptuous of the country that gave them better lives than nearly 100 percent of everybody who's ever lived. And they pass that contempt along for everyone to see.

Of course, I had a crush on Princess Leia. I really wanted to ask her out, back to my place, or something. But at the time, I was living in a squat on Fitzroy Road in Primrose Hill. It was pretty derelict. So what was I going do? Ask her to come back with me and watch me catch mice?

[ Oval House] director, Peter Oliver, gave you the right to fail. He had a philosophy that came from Winston Churchill that you go from failure to failure with enthusiasm. So Peter gave us a go and that's how Ray [Hassett] and I ended up starting Sal's Meat Market at the Oval House.

It was when Boston invited us to do a parade one November, and I was the only [Star Wars] cast member skeptical of the willingness of people to come out to see us five actors drive by in antique cars in the Boston rain. Well, it was the first time I really understood the show's popularity.

I was a carpenter in Northern Vermont and got this tax refund check that just about covered a one-way airfare to London. So this I saw as a sign from God. So I went over to see Ray [Hussett] for a couple of weeks and ended up staying 10 years. I got work as a stage carpenter at the Oval House in Kennington, South London.

It was the last generation of writers [ the Cheers] that had grown up reading books instead of watching TV. So you weren't getting anything that was derivative of I Love Lucy or Happy Days. You were getting real characters [like those] they read in P.G. Wodehouse or Dickens or somewhere along the line, because they had all grown up with a love of literature.

I don't know how many days I worked there [on Star Wars]. The thing I do remember was I somehow got a parking space next to Kermit the Frog. It was Jim Henson's space, with this Kermit the Frog sign. 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." I was always fascinated by the film-set infrastructures.

John Ratzenberger is quoted on

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