I've heard that voice before ...

John Ratzenberger is probably best known as Cliff the mailman in Cheers, but has voiced all Pixar movies. Photo / Supplied

Budding actors are frequently advised to learn another trade and, if precedent is any guide, carpentry makes a very good Plan B. Harrison Ford was building cabinets for George Lucas when the director cast him in American Graffiti. Thanks to Lucas' later films, Ford is now, judging by the box-office receipts from his movies, the most successful actor of all time.

The sixth name on the same list also belongs to a former carpenter, though his success has not earned him Ford's name recognition. And yet this actor's films have collectively grossed more than $3 billion.

He was in The Empire Strikes Back alongside Ford. He was in the first two Superman movies. He has worked with Ken Russell, Richard Attenborough, Milos Forman and John Schlesinger. And he's the only actor to have lent his larynx to a character in every one of Pixar's 11 films, including the forthcoming Toy Story 3.

You probably know John Ratzenberger best as Cliff, the barfly bore from one of the most successful sitcoms of the 80s, Cheers.

"When I think back on all the historical events I was involved with without realising it at the time," says Ratzenberger, now 62, "it takes my breath away how fortunate I've been."

Ratzenberger grew up in a factory town in Connecticut where, he recalls, "family vacations for us meant going out in the backyard". In 1969, while he was doing some casual building work in Bearsville, New York, he heard that there was a large outdoor concert taking place nearby, whose organisers needed some heavy lifting done. Ratzenberger signed up to drive a tractor ferrying supplies around the site at, yes, Woodstock.

A couple of years later, he was in Britain to visit a friend in London. He planned to spend three weeks, but ended up staying for a decade. On his return to the US, he picked up his role as ego-crazed mailman Cliff Clavin in Cheers.

Not many actors get to experience the collegiate atmosphere of a lengthy working relationship with a single team. Ratzenberger has had that joy at least twice, with both Cheers and Pixar. "And what unites them both," he explains, "is the quality of the writing."

Pixar's boss is the director John Lasseter, and Ratzenberger describes the studio's headquarters with delight: creatives are allowed to work in offices of their own design, hence one has built his cubicle entirely from cardboard boxes, and another works in a teepee. "John's office is full of toys. It's like going into a big playground, but look at what they achieve at the other end of that. When I started at Pixar it was six people. Now it's a huge studio that took over Disney's animation."

Ratzenberger had never heard of Pixar when he was asked to voice Hamm the piggy bank in 1995's Toy Story.

But by the time they asked him to take a cameo in their second film, A Bug's Life (1998), everyone knew about Hollywood's hottest animation team.

Before the recently Oscar-nominated Up was released, Ratzenberger was ranked number 11 in the chart of highest-grossing actors. He's now up to number six, so Harrison Ford should watch his back when Toy Story 3 emerges in July.

* Toy Story 1 and 2 are playing as a double feature in cinemas in 3D. Toy Story 3 is due out July 1.

- INDEPENDENT