10 Greatest Movie Extra Performances Ever
7. The "Nuclear Wessels" Lady - Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
The fourth Star Trek movie, The Voyage Home, sees the crew of the Enterprise transported to 1986 San Francisco, where Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) and Chekov (Walter Koenig) are tasked with finding a nuclear reactor which will allow them to return to the 23rd century.
The two end up asking random passers-by how they can get to Alameda and locate the reactor - or "nuclear wessels," as Chekov calls them. Though the extras were reportedly directed not to answer the pair, one of them nevertheless gave it a shot.
Extra Layla Sarakalo decided to give the duo an impromptu response, "I don't know if I know the answer to that... I think it's across the bay, in Alameda," inspiring Koenig to improv the famous response, "That's what I said, Alameda."
As it turns out, Sarakalo wasn't originally planning to appear as an extra in the film but had an ulterior motive - her car had been impounded on the day of filming after she missed a warning to move it for the shoot.
In order to make some money to free her car from the impound, she signed up to be an extra, and while the filmmakers expected her to ignore Uhura and Chekov like all the other extras, she decided to engage with them.
Director Leonard Nimoy loved the spontaneity of the interaction and so decided to keep it in the film, and because Sarakalo now had an unexpected speaking line in the movie, she had to become a member of the Screen Actors Guild.
Despite earning her dues, Sarakalo never appeared in another film, though has been firmly immortalised as a minor-yet-memorable figure in Star Trek lore.