Before starring as the love-struck Mark “Rat” Ratner in Fast Times, Backer won the 1981 Tony for Best Actor in The Floating Light Blub, a Broadway play by Woody Allen. In Fast Times, the Rat manages to get the girl, bore her, lose her, and win her back. He comments on his teen life, “I hate working the theater, all the action’s on the other side of the mall.” He does manage some action in the end. Vintage Cameron Crowe.