Photo: John Ratzenberger

John Ratzenberger has played many roles in a distinguished career that reaches back decades.

Best known, perhaps, for the irrepressible “Cheers” barstool savant, Cliff Clavin. (a character shaped from the clay of actual Bridgeport know-it-alls Ratzenberger had encountered in his hometown), he’s no one-dinensional actor — or person.

With a voice — and face — tailor-made for animated films, he has been one creature, character or another — from the Abominable Snowman (Monsters Inc., 2001) and P.T. Flea (a Bug’s Life, 1998) to Mustafa, the French waiter in “Ratatouille,” (2007), and so on — in every Pixar film made, as he will in “Coco,” which opens next week.

While acting is one of his passions — and his work — the 70-year-old native of Bridgeport, is a man of many interests.

Not only has he affection for the working man — the product himself of a family of skilled workers — but also has a clear understanding of the importance of the people who know how to make and fix things to the future of this country. For five television seasons, he roamed the United States in what was a song of the American manufacturer, “Made in America,” which aired on the Travel Channel.

One of his favorite stats to point out is that the average age of a tradesman in America is 59. That, he’ll tell you, is not a good omen for America’s future.

He recently acquired a new role: he’ll be giving advice to President Donald Trump. U.S. Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta recently named Ratzenberger to the President's Task Force on Apprenticeship Expansion.

“Kids don’t have skills. We took it away from them 30 years ago when we shut down the high school shop programs, ” he said the other day in a phone conversation from California, where he was lingering in hopes of being on hand for the birth of a grandchild.

“So you look around at them now. They don’t have the skills to put food on the table,” he said.

“There are programs around the country that show kids how to, say, saw a piece of wood. They do it and they look at you like you’ve given them gold. They didn’t know they had the ability to do something like that,” he said.

“Trump gets it. He’s a builder. He’s put this on the fast track. He signed an executive order.”

The task force is an impressive group, including governors, educators, union leaders, captains of industry.

It’s hard to believe, but in fits and starts, my relationship with Ratzenberger — “Ratz,” to the locals — goes back more than 50 years. Talk about learning a skill, it was a local triumvirate of Ratzenberger, his BFF Jimmy Shannon, also from Black Rock, and I, from Maplewood Avenue, learning, in equal doses, the arts of insubordination and the mechanical possibilities of Toro lawn mowers at the Fairchild-Wheeler Municipal golf course for a number of summers. Interesting days, those.

Ratzenberger is trim, even more so than during his “Dancing With the Stars” when he was huffing and puffing through rehearsals.

One concession to age? “Stuff I used to eat — and I mean eat with abandon — I don’t anymore. I find it slows me down the next day.”

And make no mistake, John Ratzenberger has no intention of slowing down. He’s got plenty of opinion and advice to give, whether it’s in that Boston bar or the White House.

Michael J. Daly is editorial page editor of The Connecticut Post. Email: Mdaly@ctpost.com.