Voice Acting Career
Although most famous for being the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants since the series premiere in 1999, in "Help Wanted", Tom Kenny has voiced many characters in over 200 productions. It was revealed by Kenny, that his favorite character to voice for, was Slinkman in Camp Lazlo. Kenny said that he voices "a lot of sweet yellow characters for some reason." He described his perspective on SpongeBob's voice in an interview: "He’s not quite an adult, he’s not quite a kid. Think a Stan Laurel, Jerry Lewis kind of child-man. Kind of like a Munchkin but not quite, kind of like a kid, but not in a Charlie Brown child’s voice on the TV shows."
He is known to provide the voice of the various meows of Gary the Snail in SpongeBob, but he played his first set of voice actor roles for Rocko's Modern Life, primarily as Heffer Wolfe. Joe Murray auditioned Kenny for voice acting roles for the series in a casting call in Los Angeles, California. On one occasion, the producers required Kenny to fill the role of Charlie Adler, who was absent on that occasion. In addition, Kenny had to perform one song and learn how to play another song within ten minutes due to time constraints. He said that this helped him believe that he could stand "toe to toe" with other voice actors. He also voices Cupid for the Nick show Fairly Odd Parents.
Joe Murray chose Kenny for a voice acting position in Camp Lazlo as Lumpus and Slinkman, because Murray, after seeing Kenny's previous work for Rocko's Modern Life, felt that Kenny "adds writing to his roles" and "brings so much".
He was the voice of Dog in CatDog, as well as the voice of Cliff. He also had a few roles in The Powerpuff Girls TV show. He was the Mayor, the Narrator, Mitch Mitchelson, Snake and Little Arturo from the Gangrene Gang, Rainbow the Clown, etc. He voices Eduardo, and various other characters in Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends. He plays a number of roles in the Transformers Animated TV show. A few of the characters he voices in this series are Starscream and his clones, Isaac Sumdac, and Waspinator. He is also the voice of the Autobots Skids and Wheelie in the live-action Transformers film series. He has voiced the Penguin on the The Batman. On Dilbert, Kenny voiced Ratbert, Asok and other one-time characters. He played Mr. Hal Gibson in the animated kids show Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force GO! He is also Yancy Fry and various minor characters on Futurama. He is the voice of The Ice King on Adventure Time.
In 2009, Kenny became a regular cast voice in the Fox comedy series Sit Down, Shut Up. He voices Muhammad Sabeeh "Happy" Fa-ach Nuabar, the secretive custodian who is plotting a terrorist attack, as well as Happy's interpreter. The series premiered on April 19, 2009. Kenan Thompson, Kristin Chenoweth, Jason Bateman, Nick Kroll, Cheri Oteri, Henry Winkler, Will Arnett and Will Forte are the other main cast members.
He is also the voice of Rin in the English versions of video games Final Fantasy X and its sequel, Final Fantasy X-2.
He also voiced the Best Buy elf from the retail stores' Christmas TV commercials.
He replaced Ken Sansom as the voice of Rabbit in Winnie the Pooh (2011).
He currently plays Woody Johnson on Comedy Central's Brickleberry.
Read more about this topic: Tom Kenny
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