Interview with Erik Bauersfeld, voice of Admiral Ackbar and Bib Fortuna

SFGate has a lovely interview (video above) with Erik Bauersfeld, the voice of Admiral Ackbar and Bib Fortuna in Return of the Jedi. The interviewer is Peter Hartlaub (@peterhartlaub), pop culture critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, and he does a great job. From the accompanying article:

I learned through “Star Wars” fans that the voice of “Jedi” characters Admiral Ackbar and Bib Fortuna was Erik Bauersfeld, a longtime fixture at Berkeley’s KPFA radio with a stellar reputation as a prolific radio dramatists. He was a mentor to multiple Academy Award winning sound designer Randy Thom, and at 90 years old is still producing new material.

I exchanged a few very pleasant e-mails with Bauersfeld, and a week later spent two hours with him at KPFA. I wrote an article for the San Francisco Chronicle, presenting a broad retrospective to his career — saving much of his “Star Wars” connection for this video. Bauersfeld was charming, and I liked him more as we continued to talk. To this day he hasn’t seen the original “Star Wars,” but he’s developed a growing fondness for “Star Wars” fans, saving their correspondence in a filing cabinet and writing personal responses to each one.

Even better, in a world where actors with very small connections to science fiction movies can make a lot of money on the convention circuit, Bauersfeld refuses to charge for his autograph. “It’s not so much money,” Bauersfeld told me, adding that he already has enough income for his simple needs.

Mr Bauersfeld is, according to the article, a revered and prolific radio dramatist. 

SFGate: Being Admiral Ackbar: Berkeley man reflects on brush with “Star Wars”