The Magic Behind the Voices: A Who's Who of Cartoon Voice Actors

VOICE ACTORS

VOICE ACTORS This page intentionally left blank Successful and acclaimed actor, writer, and voice director Charlie Adler concedes that his first encounter with the Hollywood animation voice-over scene was not exactly love at first sight. In the mid-1980s, after a national stage tour of Jorch Song Trilogy, in which he replaced Harvey Fierstein (for whom he is a natural sound-alike), The New York actor had settled on the West Coast to live his dream of getting a TVseries, thinking, ^•íTHrtWMWinBbnBnBi iiWWB^nfcnHií •W» 5 CHARLIE ADLER CHARLIE ADLIR "They are just going to love me in California!" Although he laughs that it "wasn't the case,"Adlerwas hired for The Redd Foxx Show only to find that he hated the dullness and the downtime associated with alive-action shoot. He reflects,"It's funny how you spend your whole life going, 'God, I just want to be in a TVshow and havea parking space.' Then I got it and itwas just so not what I wanted to do." In an interview with Will Ryan for Animation World Magazine, Adler recalled it wasat that point animation literally"grabbed" him. Upon visiting his agent's Los Angelesoffice, he quicklyrealized that the voice-over business was different from that in NewYork.Adlerlaughed about the incident later, but at the time he was"pissed off" that not only did L.A. voice-overs require separate representation from on-camera work,but theyalsowanted audition tapes. He replied indignantly,"I don't need a tape in NewYork—Ijust work." Pushing his wayinto the voice-over department, he said that Arlene Thornton and Ginny McSwain (his future agents) had "no interest" in him, but he was told to come back in a weekto record an audition tape. He did return, not sure what to do, but drew upon his improvisational skills and "threw together" atape on the spot.However, somortifiedwashe at his misbehavior that he did so hiding under a hat and sunglasses—with his back to the control room."Ijust absolutely would not be looked at. I wassoembarrassed." Adler must havegivenabravaperformance because since then his almost immediate success as a voice-over artist had to have made up for any initial awkwardness. Within two weeks of his audition, he was hired for The Smurfs, which snowballed into more than a decade of work, including all of the leading roles in Cartoon Network's Cow and Chicken, Ickis in Nickelodeon's Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, Ed and Bev Bighead from Rocko's Modern Life, and, of course,the original BusterBunnyin the StevenSpielberg production Tiny Toons. Although Adler has reportedly performed more than one hundred regular characters in over eightyanimated television series, features,and specials and his voice is heard an averageof twenty times a day all over the world, Adler claims to be "clueless" as to how manyvoices he has created, stressing that the emphasis is not on "doing a voice" as much as determining the many elements used to create a character. He deadpans, "I reallythink a lot of this is just the channeling of mental illness"; then he explains that he never approaches his characters as just doing voices per se. "I think if you do, you're dead in the water.... If you look at it as a different person and a whole character, as you would in any acting job, then you havemany more options Even if a core voice maybe similar to another character, there's 6 CHARLIE ADLER so many things that are different—the personality, the rhythm, the sensibility , the delivery,the energy underneath it" Adler began developing his acting skills in his formativeyears. Originally from Paterson, NewJersey, he began to "pick-up"on dialects when the family moved to a Boston suburb where he acquired a "very heavy" Kennedyesque accent. His family then relocated to New York, and, embarrassed about sounding likea Kennedy,he affected a"BoweryBoys"accent to fit in. He credits the necessity of developing his acting skills not only to "keep from getting in incredible trouble" but also as the result of his teachers nurturing him and channeling his energy into creative pursuits. Bysixteen, he wasworking professionally in the theater, then added commercial work to his experience. Like many children of the 19608, television was his first love and the first eleven years of his life were that of a TV junkie. A fan of old movies and the Three Stooges, Adler...