The Cast Of Cheers Then & Now

#1

The NBC sitcom Cheers ran from 1982 to 1993 and was one of the biggest critical and ratings success stories of its era. The show won countless Emmy Awards for its stars but also was nominated each of the 11 years it was on the air for Best Comedy Series, ultimately winning the show 28 statues in total. It's been nearly 24 years since Sam Malone turned off the lights for the final time in the bar where everyone knows your name. But what has the cast been doing all of this time?

#2 Ted Danson - Sam Malone

Ted Danson won two Best Actor awards for his role of Sam Malone, the dry, witty, handsome, ex-baseball player who opened a sports bar with his savings. Malone was the TV king of dry one-liners, a perfectly timed raised eyebrow, and romancing the ladies. But there were just two that actually made him settle down.

#3 After Cheers

After Cheers, Danson made guest appearances as Malone on Frasier and The Simpsons, and starred for six full seasons in another sitcom, Becker, on CBS. He then played himself on 13 episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm and got another Emmy nod for his ruthless CEO character on Damages. He pops up occasionally on other tv and film projects and was last seen in the CBS series CSI: Cyber as D.B. Russell.

#4 Shelley Long - Diane Chambers

You either loved her or hated her, there was no in between with Diane Chambers. Her character was snooty, intelligent, and always believed she was a bit too good to be working as a waitress in a sports bar with uneducated people. But Long played the part perfectly, projecting her voice while reciting poetry that was lost on the bar patrons and occasionally becoming a bit unhinged when realizing her life wasn't what she dreamed it would be. Always trying to make the bar a little more sophisticated than it really was. She did, however, win over the heart of Sam Malone, who by the time she left the show in 1987, was as madly in love with her as the rest of America was.

#5 After Cheers

After five seasons on Cheers, Long left the show to pursue other work and spend more time with her family. In later years she went on to appear in several movies and TV shows, including The Money Pit, The Brady Bunch Movie, Troop Beverly Hills, and later even revived Diane for an episode of Frasier. She's also a regular on the award-winning ABC series Modern Family playing the deranged DeDe Pritchett.

#6 Kirstie Alley - Rebecca Howe

At the start of season 6, Cheers had a new owner and a new love interest for Sam Malone after Shelley Long left. Just like they had written the Sam & Diane story, producers and writers kept the 'will they or won't they' ploy going as long as possible, with lots of friction between Sam and Rebecca, played by Kirstie Alley. Unlike Diane, Rebecca was a social climber who worked for a large conglomerate that bought out small businesses, and she wanted to keep climbing the social ladder. She often tried to prove her managerial skills but got undermined by the staff or patrons.

#7 After Cheers

When Cheers came to a close, Alley started acting in several huge Hollywood films, including the Look Who's Talking trilogy with John Travolta. She then was offered her own sitcom, Veronica's Closet, which aired for three years and brought Alley her second Emmy award. She struggled with her weight for several years and became a spokesmodel for Jenny Craig before landing another series she created about herself, called Fat Actress. She recently showed her weight loss on Dancing With The Stars Season 15 and is now a regular in the Netflix series Flaked.

#8 Rhea Perlman - Carla Tortelli

The barmaid everyone loved to hate. Perlman played the over-the-top Italian spitfire, Carla, on the show for its entire run. She won four Emmy's for the role and by the show's finale, she had eight children, a running gag on the show. Hr estranged husband, played by Dan Hedaya, often showed up in the bar to cause Havoc, and was Carla's kryptonite.

#9 After Cheers

Perlman has appeared in several movies, including There Goes the Neighborhood, Sunset Park, and Matilda (the last of which co-starred her husband, Danny DeVito). She has a recurring role on the FOX/HULU series, The Mindy Project, and recently did a season the TVLand series starring former co-star Kirstie Alley.

#10 Woody Harrelson - Woody Boyd

When beloved actor Nicholas Colasanto, who played Sam Malone's original bartender and former baseball coach, passed away, he left a void in the hearts of fans and the cast of Cheers. But Cheers didn't miss a beat, bringing in Woody Harrelson the following season to play farm-boy barkeep Woody Boyd in one of the smoothest TV cast transitions we can remember. The part gave the unknown actor 5 Emmy nominations, one win, and made him a superstar.

#11 After Cheers

Considered by female viewers as a sex symbol, Harrelson rode his newfound fame from Cheers into the mainstream of Hollywood by starring in films like White Men Can't Jump, Natural Born Killers, Zombieland, Indecent Proposal, The Messenger, and The People VS Larry Flynt. The last two films won him Oscar nominations. He has accepted dozens of small roles in low budget films but recently had an Emmy-nominated role in HBOs series True Detective, and the role of Haymitch Abernathy in The Hunger Games films.

#12 George Wendt - Norm Peterson

No one was more beloved during Cheers' run than George Wendt as Norm Peterson. The good-humored barfly always sat on the same stool and always delivered the perfect punchline, often placing himself as the butt of the joke. Whenever he entered Cheers, the patrons all yelled "Norm!" a reference that endures today. His famous "Shut the Door" line became so popular that everyone began yelling it in just about every episode of the last 2 seasons.

#13

In addition to his short-lived sitcom The George Wendt Show, Wendt has appeared in everything from Michael Jackson's "Black or White" video to Saturday Night Live's recurring "Da Bears" sketch to Larry the Cable Guy's Christmas Spectacular and more-recent hipster comedy shows like Portlandia and Children's Hospital. He recently did guest spots on Hot In Cleveland where he played a guy named Yoder, and when he entered the bar, the gang yelled out "Yoder!" in honor of his long-time gag on Cheers.

#14 John Ratzenberger - Cliff Clavin

Cliff wasn't even a character on the show when Ratzenberger read for the role of Norm. He wasn't exactly what they were looking for in their character, Norm, so they had him come back and read something else. Before the reading was over, he had convinced writers that the show needed a new character, one who was the bar know-it-all. So they wrote the character of Cliff Clavin specifically for Ratzenberger. His annoying factoids and hapless humor in every episode of the show made him unforgettable.

#15 After Cheers

While Ratzenberger still works consistently as a character actor, you haven't seen his face as often as his former castmates. You've certainly heard him, though: he's the only voice actor to appear in EVERY Pixar film produced, most recently as Bill the Crab in Finding Dory.

#16 Kelsey Grammer - Dr. Frasier Crane

He always seemed out of his element, and that's because he was. Dr. Crane was an overly educated comedic foil for the other patron at Cheers, often providing fodder for the blue-collar drinkers to make fun of because he was so pretentious and overly educated. His character was meant to be a six episode fling for Diane, but the audience loved his wit and charm so they wrote him in as a regular, and he eventually won over the gang at the bar.

#17 After Cheers

Grammer went on to portray the idiosyncratic doctor Crane for two decades. Frasier became one of the most popular spinoffs of all time, running for 11 seasons and winning 37 Emmy Awards against 108 nominations. But after Frasier, Grammer did not stop. He went on to appear in four other failed TV series and then jumped to Broadway. Viewers of tThe Simpsons know him as Sideshow Bob, but he recently contributed a voice cameo toÂ Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and made a brief appearance in Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising. He also appeared in the latest Transformers movie as a villain.

#18 Bebe Neuwirth - Lilith Sternin Crane

Neuwirth was meant to be a three-episode character until producers decided that they were going to eventually do a spin-off of Frasier Crane and he needed a wife. Neuwirth went on to portray Dr. Lilith Sternin full time in the last 2 seasons of Cheers and then on the show Frasier, for which she won two Emmy awards. She can now be seen on the CBS series 'Madam Secretary'.

#19 Nicholas Colasanto - Coach

For three seasons, Colasanto played sweet, simple-minded baseball coach-turned-bartender Ernie "Coach" Pantusso on the NBC sitcom, and his legacy continues as one of TV's most memorable characters of all time. Nicholas Colasanto passed away from a heart attack at the age of 61 in 1985.

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