Very Voice Actors – Hank Azaria

Hank Azaria models a very realistic staircase to success. His path on the entertainment business didn’t consist of stories of overnight success or lucky first breaks. A bit of a late bloomer to the acting world, he wasn’t one who knew since childhood that he wanted to be an actor. It wasn’t until he was 16 and performed in his first stage production that he decided he’d shoot for an occupation as a performer. He had, however, been mimicking and memorizing various parts from his favorite shows and movies since he was a young boy. In that regard he was training himself very early on.

Hank attended Tufts University in Massachusetts where he studied drama. While attending the college he became good friends with actor Oliver Platt, so much so that Hank eventually became the godfather of Oliver’s son. Together the two attempted to start up their own theatre and named it “Big Theatre.” This venture, like many ahead on his winding path, turned out to be a flop. They only put on one production: The Dumb Waiter. After his time at Tufts he moved on to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Hank was offered representation by an agent in LA and, after realizing that the television world may prove a more fruitful endeavor than stage, packed up his stuff and moved to the west coast.

Once again his path proved to be a very gradual, not-so-glammery rise to success as he worked on small job after small job, performing stand up, and serving as a bartender for a catering company. (That’s right, Moe- I mean Hank Azaria, was actually a bartender when he was younger!) He starred in some commercials and had very small roles in several shows. He was in a few pilots that went absolutely no where. And even the bigger shows he was privileged to be in he only had a line or two, like Family Ties and Growing Pains.

The first, and no doubt biggest break for Hank came in the form of a “cattle call” for several characters on a new show: The Simpsons. 

The actor who had played Moe the bartender for the majority of season 1 had recently left the show and they were looking to dub and fill in his part. Hank only had one voice over credit to his name when he went in to audition. He’d played the dog in a failed pilot: Hollywood Dog. But the casting director for The Simpsons knew Hank from that one role and asked him to audition for Moe. Pressed for a voice, he thought of a character he was currently playing in a play. The character was a drug dealer and Hank had given him a “bad Al Pacino impression from his performance in Dog Day Afternoon”. He pitched it down and used it for Moe and the producers thought it was perfect. He dubbed in the character’s lines and was sure he’d never hear from them again.

He was continually shocked as they brought him in for more and more characters. Each time he’d leave the studio he was once again sure he’d never be back. He thought he did a terrible job, having to be led through “the ABC’s of comedy” from the producer. Whatever the case, the request kept coming. Finally, in Season 2, Hank signed a contract and became an official part of the cast.

The origins of a large base of Hank’s voices come directly from impressions, (and sometimes bad impressions), of famous celebrities. He cites the inspiration for many of the characters:

– Moe = Al Pacino

– Chief Wiggum = Edward G. Robinson

– Officer Lou = Sylvester Stallone

– Dr. Nick = Ricky Ricardo (an admittedly bad one)

– Wise Guy = Charles Bronson

– Professor Frink = Jerry Lewis (specifically from The Nutty Professor)

– Sea Captain = Robert Newton (as a pirate)

This gig set Hank up for the rest of his career. He did continue with more work in both the voice over realm and on camera realm playing Eddie Brock/Venom in the 90’s Spider-Man show, Gargamel in later iterations of The Smurfs (including both movies), and had roles in the ’98 Godzilla movie, a role on Friends, and performed in Monty Python’s theatrical musical Spamalot.

The Simpsons though, without a doubt, gave him the most steady and collectively highest salary of his life. The story of the cast’s pay is kind of crazy. When Hank first signed on, the actors were being paid $30,000 per episode. But in 1998, a rumble went down in Fox about pay rate. Fox threatened to replace the entire cast and even lined up their chosen actors, ready to pull a switch-a-roo. The dispute was settled and the payment landed on a meaty $125,000 per episode. That lasted until 2004, when the actors decided once again that they weren’t being paid enough. Several of them purposefully skipped out on table-reads as a protest. They wished for the amount to be heightened to $360,000. In the end the pay for each actor went up, with Hank’s coming to somewhere between $250,000 and $360,000 per episode. BUT THEN production for the 20th season was put on hold when, you guessed it, the cast demanded higher pay. It turned out in their favor and the payment for each episode was hiked to a whopping $400,000 per episode! However three years later Fox threatened to cancel the entire show if budget cuts weren’t made and the payment dropped to $300,000 per. (Oh no, whatever will they do.)

Hank continues to enjoy a very fruitful career, recently performing on camera for the show Ray Donovan, appearing on Talk Shows such as Conan, and touring with a live show making use of his various voices. Check out a video of a bit he does as Chief Wiggum singing “Let It Go”.

Hank is a grounding reminder that success can, and most likely will, come at a gradual and realistic rate. Hang in there! Hank did, and look at him now!

NEXT EDITION’S FEATURED VOICE ACTOR: We’ll be exploring the Uncharted world of this voice actor’s world. Don’t speak poorly of this guy or he might take you out with a hidden blade. It’s Nolan North!

Very Voice Actors – Bill Scott

Many cartoon loving people, myself included, have a very soft spot for the Jay Ward cartoon series like Rocky and Bullwinkle and Mr. Peabody and Sherman. Their cultured humor, irregular pacing, and simplistic yet endearing artwork drew us in as children and kept us transfixed as adults. There’s grown an almost familial love in our hearts as we feel twangs of innocence and good times when we see and hear the voices of our favorite characters like Rocket J. Squirrel, Dudley Do-Right, that narrator of Fractured Fairy Tales, and of course the great magic-trick performing, bad advice giving Bullwinkle.

Bill Scott is the man who gave voice to some of the biggest names in the Jay Ward archives. He has the names Dudley Do-Right, Mr. Peabody, George of the Jungle, Super Chicken, AND Bullwinkle surrounding his title.

Ironically, for a man who’s well known for his pipes, Bill was born with tuberculosis and struggled with it as a child. His parents moved from New Jersey to the arid climate of Denver, Colorado. This did indeed help the young boy’s infirmity!

While his prolific voice over career is something to marvel, his writing and artistic career is just as (if not more) extensive and impressive. He discovered his fascination with animation growing up with Felix The Cat. His first job as an artist came to him when he was just a kid. He was payed to paint pictures of characters from the then-recent Disney movie Fantastia live in front of customers and passersby for a downtown department store.

After graduating college he went on teach at a high school for a year, saying later the experience was “traumatic”. He soon decided to enlist in the army and was stationed in the U.S. Army’s “First Motion Picture Unit” where he served under Lt. Ronald Reagan! The First Motion Picture Unit was a powerhouse creator of army films (largely propaganda), and was the first military unit made up of people from the entertainment industry.

When he finished his time with the unit he moved on to several big name writing jobs. He did work for Warner Bros., wrote for the largely popular puppet show Time For Beany, and worked on many projects for “United Productions of America” including the adaptation of Dr. Seuss’s Gerald McBoing-Boing.

Following this path of success he began writing for Jay Ward studios where he was eventually asked to help in the creation of “An adventure story about a moose and a squirrel.” When Ward discovered Bill’s vocal abilities he personally asked him to be the voice of the blundering pun-telling moose in their new series.

While he added onto his work for Jay Ward with voices for Mr. Peabody and Dudley, he continued his writing career. General Mills, a huge sponsor of Rocky and Bullwinkle, had a plethora of ads for Bill to write. He even branched out to on-camera work as well, appearing in The Duck Factory starring Jim Carrey and showcasing other voice talents like Don Messick and Frank Welker.

Bill Scott greatly appreciated the legendary characters he was so privileged to give life to. “I grew up with you!” He says, quoting many he’s met. He acknowledges what a bizarre and rewarding job it is to say: I’m Bullwinkle Moose.

“Why wouldn’t you be proud to say that?”

NEXT EDITION’S FEATURED VOICE ACTOR: First name Michael, last name Rotch…wait that’s not right…First name Hank, last name Azaria. IS THERE A HANK AZARIA IN THE HOUSE???

Very Voice Actors – Maurice LaMarche

So……

Let’s talk about Maurice LaMarche.

His credits are immense. Somewhere in his spanning portfolio you’re sure to find an iconic role you love and/or grew up with. I mean, just take a gander:

*Cracks knuckles*

Maurice has played Dr. Doom in recent Marvel cartoons like The Ultimate Spiderman and Avengers Assemble; He’s Yosemite Sam in the new Looney Tunes Show among just about everything “Warner Bros” that has that character; He was the evil “Father” in Codename: Kids Next Door; He was Master Fung in Xiaolin Showdown; He played Shovis the Butler in Nickelodeon’s Catscratch; He’s the voice of Mortimer Mouse on Disney shows for years now; He did Egon for the Ghostbusters cartoon series; He was Taz in the 90’s show Taz-Mania; The role of Captain Planet’s arch-nemesis “Verminous Skumm” was his; Back on Tiny Toons he played Dizzy Devil; and he was Chief Quimby on the original Inspector Gadget show.

I mean, that’s a lot…but we haven’t even gotten to the biggest stuff.

Mr. LaMarche is practically every side character in Futarama including Kif Kroker, Morbo, and the head of Orson Welles. He was Mr. Pataki in Hey Arnold. And he’s even made his mark in feature film Disney movies playing the Root Beer Tapper in Wreck-It-Ralph and the King in Frozen.

But of course the role that is held dearly to most hearts, the role he is most credited for is…The clever, the conniving, the calculating cartoon icon: The Brain!

So where did this megalithic monster of voice over get his start? Well back when Maurice was a child he thrived for attention. When he discovered he could mimic voices he used it to get laughs out of his classmates by impersonating famous actors and Warner Bros. characters.

His need for attention didn’t cease and he soon dropped out of high school to start a stand up routine at the age of 19. Living in Toronto at the time he began working the clubs. One fateful night a woman who worked for Nelvana, a Canadian animation company, discovered his talent for impressions. He was signed on to do two impressions for a cartoon short called “Easter Fever”: Steve Martin and Don Rickles. Maurice describes the sensation of seeing his voice come out of cartoon characters as “the coolest high I’d ever felt”.

When he moved out to Los Angeles he had the typical idea of the tinsel town many actors paint for themselves: Images of his name in lights and his face on the big screen. He quickly found it to be a very difficult and rejection-filled world where he had to scrape together ends meat to get by. But a massive force of help came to him in the form of voice-talent extraordinaire Frank Welker (who we will most certainly get to at some point on Very Voice Actors). Frank had heard him in a few auditions and began spreading a good word about him in the voice over community. It was this prompting that helped Maurice land his first big role as the Chief on the 80’s cartoon series Inspector Gadget.

While this was happening he was continuing his stand up career, rather successfully, and eventually opened for such names as Rodney Dangerfield, George Carlin, Howie Mandel, and Donna Summer.

Despite a steady rise in popularity in both the stand up realm and cartoons, Maurice dealt with some very heavy losses that put him in dark places. The first misfortune occurred in 1987 when his father was murdered by his best friend. This drove Maurice into drinking and brought him out of the stand up world for 2 years. He says his father came to nearly every one of Maurice’s shows and knowing he wouldn’t be there any longer was too difficult to deal with. Eventually able to bring himself back to the comedy world he started with stand up once again only to have another horrible tragedy befell his family. His eighteen year old sister was killed in a car accident. Maurice says at that point, “that was the death knell for my stand up career. I just didn’t have the energy.”

Through all of the ups and downs, however, cartoons were a steady and constant part of his life. He grabbed more and more roles in various series and says the cartoons allowed him to return to his childhood.

When Maurice heard that Spielberg was creating a cartoon series, he yearned to be a part of it but thought his chances were very slim. He ended up nabbing the part of Dizzy Devil on Tiny Toons. When the spinoff show – Animaniacs- was coming to fruition he once again went in for auditions. Trying for the part of The Brain he recalls seeing a drawing and thinking “That looks like Orson Welles!” Not only was Orson one of his best impressions but he had been known across the industry to go into the Welles voice in between takes with different shows. He jumped right on that track (and added a bit of Vincent Price in the voice mix) and the executives agreed the voice was a perfect fit. Andrea Romano, legendary voice director who was working on the show, later told Maurice that they stopped looking for The Brain’s voice after his audition.

Maurice continues his legendary voice-actor status today, staying plenty busy with some of the newest and hottest stuff. His resume, interestingly enough, also includes credits for dubbing in voices like an Orson Welles impression in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, and Patrick Stewart in The Pagemaster. He’s been privileged to take on such iconic roles as Mr. Gadget, Toucan Sam and Popeye, saying (of Popeye) that his throat actually bled in an attempt to recreate the iconic voice. He also has a very special skill that seems to be elusive to even the greatest voice actors around: Belching. He’s come in to record burps in cartoon shows and movies for years and is actually credited for the long winded belch in the movie Elf. Check out a video of him doing his belch act here:

A legend. A very, very talented individual.

Maurice LaMarche is certainly one worth talking about.

NEXT EDITION’S FEATURED VOICE ACTOR: Gee, wouldn’t YOU like to read an entire article about a hairy brown moose? Well next week’s lesson will be about the great Bill Scott!

Very Voice Actors – April Winchell

April Winchell is a highly successful voice actress, making her mark in cartoons like Monsters Vs. Aliens, Ben 10: Omniverse, Gravity Falls, Jake and the Never Land Pirates, Kim Possible, and Buzz Lightyear Star Command. Further roles include multiple side character voices in Kim Possible, Cow and Chicken, and Mighty Ducks. And among her most recognizable (and personally liked) roles are Clarabelle Cow in Disney’s Mickey Mouse shows and Ms. Finster from Recess.

April is the daughter of Paul Winchell, a very successful entertainer in the 50’s and 60’s performing in ventriloquism, comedy, and acting. Shockingly, Paul was also an inventor who first built and patented an artificial heart. Bizarre, huh?

It is interesting to note her father’s entrepreneurial activities outside of performing because April, his daughter, followed in similar footsteps. In addition to her famously successful acting career she had the touch of gold in separate business ventures. Back in 1992 April started an advertising company (with her then-husband) called Radio Savant Productions. Her work with her company earned her a multitude of awards.

In 2009 she created a website (now sadly taken down) called Regretsy. It was a site dedicated to the bizarre why-would-anyone-buy-that items created and sold on Etsy. Within days of the creation she had millions of hits and even offers to buy the website rights from her. Denying anyone the ownership of it, she kept up the site for over 3 years. The profits of the organization largely went to charities and ended up donating upwards of $200,000 to charitable organizations. The website had such an unexpectedly large and quick flow of income that PayPal actually froze her account, as well as April’s personal one, to look into the situation. The money in the locked account was going to help give gifts to hundreds of children that Christmas and, as a result of being shut out, April was unable to send presents. This quickly became a trending topic on Twitter and Paypal soon openly apologized and returned all of Regretsy‘s income and additionally donated $20,000 to the charity organizations she sponsored. April went on to sell a book of the “best of” from the former website. You can find it here: http://www.amazon.com/Regretsy-Where-DIY-Meets-WTF/dp/0345523180

April wrote for Roseanne after catching the attention of Roseanne herself with her portrayal of a crabby old lady in a series of Glendale Federal Bank commercials.

Also in this incredibly interesting woman’s life, April dated both Jim Meskimen (a formerly featured voice actor here on Very Voice Actors) and actor Kevin Spacey. In 2005 she was diagnosed with cancer and eventually made a total recovery. April has actually won every major advertising award that exists. Most were received through Radio Savant Productions. Back in 1999 she began to host for KFI, a Los Angeles radio station, and was part of the biggest increase in listeners the station had ever experienced.

Whether you’re following her steps in the voice over world or looking at her methods of making the most out of life, April Winchell is a model in tenacity and creativity that will lead to a full and exciting life.

NEXT EDITION’S FEATURED VOICE ACTOR: Readers, are you pondering what I’m pondering? …That’s right, what if next week we featured the great Maurice LaMarche on Very Voice Actors? Brainy decision!