Familiar Voices: The Faces Behind Our Favorite Cartoon Characters

TOM KENNY

KNOWN FOR: A talking sponge, a deranged ice wizard, the new voice of Rabbit in "Winnie the Pooh" productions since 2011, and too many minor characters to list here

Gifted comic Tom Kenny might be known to some people as a key cast member of Bob Odenkirk and David Cross' influential HBO sketch comedy "Mr. Show," but his distinctive voice is immediately recognizable to many as that of SpongeBob SquarePants.

Kenny first started his voice career on "Rocko's Modern Life" as bovine sidekick Heffer Wolfe and soon became a close friend of show creator Joe Murray. His wide range of goofy accents and inflections lead to voice roles where he often plays two or three big or little characters in a given episode, although his only "starring" role besides SpongeBob is that of the Ice King in Cartoon Network's "Adventure Time."

TARA STRONG

KNOWN FOR: Ben, Ken, and Sandra Tennyson of "Ben 10," Timmy Turner of "Fairly OddParents," Raven of "Teen Titans" and "Teen Titans Go!"

If you chose any young female character from about 1986 onward, there's a good chance that it was voiced by actress Tara Strong, but the same could be said for many male characters as well.

Many female voice performers often play young boys in cartoons due to the shortage of male actors who can sustain a prepubescent voice, and Strong has lent her voice to a number of cartoon guys.

Strong has also featured in a number of video game roles, appearing several times as the voice of Harley Quinn in Arkham Asylum and Injustice: Gods Among Us. She currently enjoys a measure of fame as the speaking voice of Twilight Sparkle in "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic," the favorite show of precocious girls and creepy men alike.

MAURICE LAMARCHE

KNOWN FOR: Morbo, Calculon, Lrr, and many others from "Futurama," Toucan Sam and the narrator for Lexus commercials, and any time Orson Welles has appeared on screen since he died

After a promising stand-up career was cut short by a series of personal tragedies, gifted mimic Maurice LaMarche decided to focus full-time on what had previously been a sideline voicing characters on "GI Joe" and "The Real Ghostbusters."

Auditioning for the part of the Brain on Warner Brothers' "Animaniacs," LaMarche rolled out an Orson Welles impression that he was soon to become famous for-in fact, his Welles was regarded as so dead-on that his voice was dubbed over Vincent D'Onofrio's Welles in the 1994 film, "Ed Wood."

LaMarche's Welles and other impressions earned him a spot in the short-lived animated sitcom "The Critic" where during one 30-minute episode he voiced 29 different characters. His range was put to good use again in 2001's Adult Swim series "Harvey Birdman," where LaMarche could indulge his life-long affection for Hanna-Barbera cartoons by mimicking the classic voices behind Fred Flintstone, Apache Chief, and Magilla Gorilla.

TRESS MACNEILLE

KNOWN FOR: Dot of "Animaniacs," Mom of "Futurama," Chip and sometimes Dale of "Chip n' Dale", Daisy Duck and multiple other voices of Kingdom Hearts II

Tress MacNeille wanted to do the voices for her favorite cartoons ever since she was eight, but was pressured into a "real" job as a broadcaster and disc jockey that she only broke out of twenty years later as a voice on an episode of "Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo."

Minor roles followed until 1990, when she was cast as Babs Bunny of "Tiny Toon Adventures" and worked on the side doing minor voices for "The Simpsons."

Today, it's hard to find an episode of "The Simpsons" where MacNeille's voice doesn't crop up, either as semi-regular characters like Agnes Skinner or as multiple smaller female characters in an episode, and her 200-plus acting credits include TV, film, anime dubs, and video games.

PHIL LAMARR

KNOWN FOR: Samurai Jack of the series of the same name, Static Shock of the series of the same name, Hermes Conrad of "Futurama" (original title The Hermes Conrad Show)

On the off chance you might have watched some of the early episodes of Fox sketch comedy "MADtv," you might have noticed gifted improv comedian Phil LaMarr in a number of celebrity impressions, ranging from Samuel L. Jackson to Bill Maher.

If not, you might have briefly seen him as Marvin in "Pulp Fiction ("Aw man, I shot Marvin in the face")."  If you're the sort of (odd) person who notices the credits during cartoons, you might know him as the voice of Samurai Jack, Green Lantern, and Hermes Conrad, along with dozens of other, smaller roles that require a deep, resounding voice, as well as a number of minor African-American characters across a wide variety of shows.

FRANK WELKER

KNOWN FOR: Most of the original "Transformers" characters (including their cameo appearances on shows like "Family Guy" and "Robot Chicken"), the current voice of Garfield, too many Hanna-Barbera characters (big and small) to list here, and an astonishing number of non-talking animals

If you're in need of a good measure of just how many voices Frank Welker has provided to cartoons over his long career, consider the fact that his films grossed more than those featuring any other actor for 31 years until Samuel L Jackson finally broke his record in 2011, only to lose it the next year by almost $1.3 billion.

It wasn't so much because Welker was in particularly big pictures (with a few notable exceptions) but because he did and does "appear" in dozens of movies each year in roles as big as leading characters and as small as incidental animal noises, the most recent of which was the provision of wolf growls for the Liam Neeson thriller "The Grey."

Welker's first voice role was as Fred Jones from the various "Scooby-Doo" cartoon series, a role that he amazingly still plays today (while also taking on the voice duties for Scooby-Doo himself), and one that he's so deeply tied to that almost every single appearance of the character on any show is almost certain to feature Welker's voice talents.

JUNE FORAY

KNOWN FOR: Nearly every female character on "The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show," hundreds of uncredited or partially-credited roles for Hanna-Barbera, Granny from Warner Brothers shorts from 1955 to today

The voice of Rocket J. Squirrel, Cindy Lou Who, and Granny from "Tweety and Sylvester" cartoons (even today), June Foray was the first voice actress to hit it big, to the point where legendary animator Chuck Jones once said "June Foray is not the female Mel Blanc, Mel Blanc was the male June Foray."

Foray got into radio voice acting at the age of 15, becoming a fixture of the golden age of radio until she landed the part of Lucifer the Cat in 1950's "Cinderella." This was the beginning of a long and storied career in voice work that included roles in TV, feature films, and even the voice of the original "Chatty Cathy" doll.

At 95, June Foray is the oldest person to win an Emmy (for her performance on "The Garfield Show") and is slated to reprise her performance as Rocky in a new series of Rocky and Bullwinkle shorts.

MEL BLANC

KNOWN FOR: Practically every single classic cartoon character ever

The industry's first celebrity voice actor, Mel Blanc was actually known well enough from his radio performances on "The Jack Benny Program" that he briefly had his own radio show.

The work he's still famous for today, however, was with Leon Schlesinger Productions, creating the voices for virtually all of today's WB cartoon characters and also becoming the first voice artist to earn a screen credit (a concession granted after Schlesinger refused to raise Blanc's salary).

After his WB exclusive contract expired, Blanc started working with Hanna-Barbera and Chuck Jones' MGM Animation, voicing dozens more characters for years and even returning to the role of Bugs Bunny for a "walk-on" in 1988's "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" a year before his death.

The only significant break in Mel Blanc's career was a horrific car accident in 1961 that left him in a coma for two weeks, but even then cartoons were in his blood. H son Noel said that in a desperate gamble, one of the attending neurologists walked up to the bed and asked "Bugs Bunny, how are you doing today?" There was a brief and embarrassing silence before a weak but immediately recognizable voice croaked, "Myeeeeh... what's up, doc?"