Career
Newman was born in LaGrange, Georgia. He is a 1974 graduate of the University of Georgia, and is member of the Delta Chapter of the Sigma Chi Fraternity. An alumnus of the Harvard Business School, Newman's first job in New York City was at Newsweek. After doing stand-up comedy, Newman soon capitalized on his unique vocalizations, writing the book MouthSounds (first published in 1980; recently updated with a DVD). As a regular on the radio variety show A Prairie Home Companion, his vocal sound effects and acting can be heard on all the away shows from the APHC home base in St. Paul. He has also worked heavily as a voice actor with numerous film, television, and video game credits including Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Doug (as Skeeter Valentine, Mr. Dink, and other characters), and Grand Theft Auto 2, Harry and the Hendersons, Gremlins, Munchies, Storybook World, Wolf, and Men in Black.
As a talk show host, Newman was the host of Livewire, a kids' talk show on Nickelodeon in the early 1980s. Livewire was known for giving bands their first television appearance, including R.E.M. and Split Enz. He was also a host for the Halloween TV Special Game, Nick or Treat!
Newman worked with Jim Henson and the Muppets in the 1980s, first as a contributor to Muppet Magazine, and then as the writer of the Muppet Show On Tour live show. In 1987, Newman played the lead role in Henson's sitcom pilot Puppetman. (The pilot aired on CBS, but wasn't picked up as a series.) Newman also appeared in a 1988 Henson direct-to-video special called Neat Stuff to Know & to Do.
Prior to the 2000 Presidential Election, Newman was cast as the voice of Garry Trudeau's comic strip character Uncle Duke. He provided both voice and motion capture for Duke 2000, a series of online computer animated shorts, and can still be heard in the "Ask Duke" interactive game. He also provided the voice of Trudeau's Jimmy Thudpucker for a NetAid concert.
As an on-camera performer, he was one of only three adult regulars, along with Teri Misner and Mowava Pryor on the 1990s incarnation of The Mickey Mouse Club, and can currently be seen performing wacky sounds while teaching phonics on the PBS reading series Between the Lions (for which he also writes and provides animated voices), and as the conductor on PBS's Lomax, the Hound of Music. Newman won two writing Emmys for Between the Lions. As a musician, he has composed music for the animated series Doug and PB&J Otter, and wrote songs for Doug's 1st Movie. Fred Newman has been married to his wife Katy Dobbs since 1985 and together they have a son named Gil John Newman and a daughter named Lila Newman. The family also has some noisy house pets. Lila appeared on APHC once as a stand-up comedian while her dad was doing sound effects. Newman admits that when he was growing up as a child, he was removed from several classrooms for making sounds behind the teacher's back, once by his bottom lip.
Read more about this topic: Fred Newman (actor)
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“Clearly, society has a tremendous stake in insisting on a woman’s natural fitness for the career of mother: the alternatives are all too expensive.”
—Ann Oakley (b. 1944)
“Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)