Jeff Bergman Biography

Jeffrey Allen "Jeff" Bergman (born July 10, 1960) is an American voice actor, comedian, and impressionist. Bergman is a cartoon impressionist who has provided the modern-day voices of various classic cartoon characters, most notably with Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barbera characters. Bergman was the first to replace Mel Blanc as the voice of Bugs Bunny and several other Warner Bros. cartoon characters following Blanc's death in 1989. Bergman alternated with Joe Alaskey and Greg Burson in providing most of Blanc's voices for various Warner Bros. productions.

Early life

Bergman was born in Philadelphia on July 10, 1960. Throughout his early childhood, he impersonated several celebrities and cartoon characters, his first impression being comic influence Ed Sullivan at the age of 6. At the age of 15, Bergman began doing impressions of various Looney Tunes characters. He studied theater and communications at the University of Pittsburgh where he first did voice work when he got involved with a student-run radio station and interned at KQV and WDVE radio stations in Pittsburgh. While there, he made his first demo reel and was profiled in a story on KDKA-TV's Evening Magazine. The story was picked up on similar TV news magazines shows and helped land him his representation with William Morris Agency following his graduation from Pitt in 1983. During his time at Pitt, he encountered voice actor and comedian Mel Blanc, who was best known for voicing groundbreaking animated characters, such as Bugs Bunny, Tweety, and Barney Rubble. They met in Blanc's hotel room in 1981, where Bergman voiced Blanc's characters for him, earning himself a 45-minute session. Bergman credits Blanc with helping him gain his diploma two years later.

Career

Jeff Bergman voiced the Pillsbury Doughboy following Paul Frees' death in 1986 to 2013. Bergman's work with Warner Bros. began in 1986, recording voices for The Bugs Bunny Show. After being rebuffed several times by Warner Bros. directors, he recorded a tape of himself as several of Blanc's characters, including Bugs Bunny. He took the tape to the production company and used a switch to toggle back and forth between his work and the original Mel Blanc recording. The producers were unable to tell the difference between the voices, and Bergman, at the age of 29, became the first performer to provide the voice of Bugs Bunny after Mel Blanc died on July 10, 1989 – Bergman's 29th birthday.

His first appearance in that role, as well as those of Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd, was in the 1990 animated short Box-Office Bunny, Bugs's first in over 25 years. Bergman later voiced Bugs and Daffy again in the 1990 TV specials Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue and The Earth Day Special (also voicing Tweety Bird and Porky Pig in the latter). He voiced Bugs, Daffy, Elmer, and Yosemite Sam in the 1991 short (Blooper) Bunny, as well as several characters (including Sylvester the Cat and Foghorn Leghorn) in animated TV specials and newer animated series' such as The Plucky Duck Show, Taz-Mania, and Tiny Toon Adventures, a show focusing on the lives of younger versions of the character. He also lent his voice to Bugs, Daffy and Porky in the animated sequences of Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Away from the Looney Tunes, Bergman also voiced George Jetson on the amusement park ride The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera. Bergman later conceded that he had begun promoting himself as the new official voice of the Looney Tunes characters. Warner Bros. took exception to this and, to avoid repeating the stranglehold of Mel Blanc's exclusivity, began using other voice actors such as Joe Alaskey (who was the first person to replace Blanc as the voice of Yosemite Sam in Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1988), Greg Burson and Billy West.

Throughout the 2000s, Bergman kept himself busy by voicing various Hanna-Barbera characters, namely Fred Flintstone, in newer specials such as The Flintstones: On the Rocks, only rarely returning to the voices of the Looney Tunes in that time when Alaskey and West were not available. In 2003, he voiced Bugs in a sketch on NBC comedy show Saturday Night Live. Eventually, after almost 20 years, and after sporadically appearing as the Looney Tunes characters for nearly two decades, he returned as the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Foghorn Leghorn, Sylvester the Cat, Pep Le Pew, and Tweety in 2011's The Looney Tunes Show. He also returned for the 2015 series Wabbit, voicing Bugs and Foghorn, as well as other minor characters such as Michigan J. Frog.

Bergman also voiced George Jetson and Mr. Spacely in Jetsons: The Movie when their previous voice actors George O'Hanlon and Mel Blanc both died during production – he had been working at his local radio in Pennsylvania when he received the call to travel to California and complete the dialogue. Bergman is a recurring cast member of Family Guy, usually voicing Fred Flintstone, George Jetson, and Sylvester the Cat, as well as The Cleveland Show and American Dad!. He also gave a voice sample for a character in the 2011 Spyro game, Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure.

Bergman had a recurring role as a radio intern Gus Kahana on the AMC comedy-drama Remember WENN, which aired in the late 1990s. He also voiced Zap in Skylanders: Giants, Skylanders: Swap Force, Skylanders: Trap Team, Skylanders: SuperChargers, and Skylanders: Imaginators.

Voice roles

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1986	The Bugs Bunny Show	Additional voices
1990	The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera	George Jetson Ghosts Police Chief	Short film
	Gremlins 2: The New Batch	Bugs Bunny Daffy Duck Porky Pig
	Jetsons: The Movie	George Jetson Mr. Spacely Basketball Coach
	Box-Office Bunny	Bugs Bunny Elmer Fudd Daffy Duck	Short film
1991	(Blooper) Bunny	Bugs Bunny Daffy Duck Elmer Fudd Yosemite Sam
	Yakety Yak, Take it Back	Bugs Bunny
1992	Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers	Bugs Bunny Daffy Duck Elmer Fudd Yosemite Sam Porky Pig
	Trash Talk	Bugs Bunny
1998	The Secret of Mulan	Additional voices	Direct-to-video
2006	Porky and Daffy in the William Tell Overture	Porky Pig	Short film
2010	Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes	Butch Droopy	Direct-to-video
2012	Big Miracle	Ronald Reagan
2012	Foodfight!	Charlie Tuna
2015	The Flintstones & WWE: Stone Age SmackDown!	Fred Flintstone	Direct-to-video
	Looney Tunes: Rabbits Run	Bugs Bunny Daffy Duck Foghorn Leghorn Pep Le Pew
2016	Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders	The Joker
2017	The Jetsons & WWE: Robo-WrestleMania!	George Jetson Mr. Spacely
2017	Tom and Jerry: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory	Droopy, American Reporter

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1990	Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue	Bugs Bunny Daffy Duck	TV short
	The Earth Day Special	Bugs Bunny Tweety Porky Pig
1990-1991	Tiny Toon Adventures	Bugs Bunny Daffy Duck Foghorn Leghorn Elmer Fudd Tasmanian Devil Yosemite Sam Sylvester Tweety Additional voices
1991	Bugs Bunny's Lunar Tunes	Bugs Bunny	TV short
	Bugs Bunny's Overtures to Disaster	Bugs Bunny Daffy Duck Porky Pig Elmer Fudd Yosemite Sam Sylvester Papa Bear Mr. Meek	TV short
1992	Bugs Bunny's Creature Features	Bugs Bunny Daffy Duck Elmer Fudd Yosemite Sam
	The Plucky Duck Show	Foghorn Leghorn Daffy Duck	Episodes: "A Quack in the Quarks" "A Ditch in Time" "Slugfest/Duck Dodgers Jr./Duck Trek"
1995-2000	Ace Ventura: Pet Detective	Additional voices
1996-1999	Doug	Coach Spitz
2001	The Flintstones: On the Rocks	Fred Flintstone Parking Guard Vendor	TV movie
	The Jetsons: Father & Son Day	George Jetson Elroy Jetson Mr. Cosmo Spacely
2002	Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law	George Jetson Bakov Clown	Episode: "Shaggy Busted"
	The Jetsons: The Best Son	George Jetson Elroy Jetson Robot Boy
2003	Saturday Night Live	Bugs Bunny	Episode: "Queen Latifah/Ms. Dynamite"
	Cartoon Network's Funniest Bloopers and Other Embarrassing Moments	Porky Pig Fred Flintstone George Jetson Foghorn Leghorn Henery Hawk	TV short
2004	Johnny Bravo	Fred Flintstone	Episode: "Wilderness Protection Program/A Page Right Out of History"
2006-present	Family Guy	Fred Flintstone Barney Rubble George Jetson Sylvester the Cat Homer Simpson Max Weinstein Victor
2008, 2009	Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy	Host Fred Flintstone Barney Rubble	Episodes: "A Dog on the $25,000 Pyramid" "Fred and Barney Try to Get Into a Club"
2010	The Cleveland Show	Alda-nator Garrison Keillor	Episodes: "Love Rollercoaster" "Buried Pleasure"
2011-2014	The Looney Tunes Show	Bugs Bunny Daffy Duck Sylvester Tweety Foghorn Leghorn Pep Le Pew Girardi
2012	Cartoon Network 20th Anniversary	Bugs Bunny Daffy Duck
2013	Mad	Daffy Duck James P. Sullivan Captain Marvel	Episodes: "First White House Down/McDuck Dynasty" "Iron Bland 3/Monsters Community" "World War ZZZ/SHAZAM! & Cat"
2014	Rick and Morty	Additional voices	Episode: "Rixty Minutes"
	Phineas and Ferb	Additional voices	Episode: "The Klimpaloon Ultimatum"
	Mike Tyson Mysteries	Elton John (Episode 3) Elon Musk (Episode 3) Robert Redford (Episode 4)	Voice
2015-present	Wabbit	Bugs Bunny Sylvester Foghorn Leghorn Michigan J. Frog Cecil Turtle	Voice

Video games

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2011	Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure	Additional voices
2012	The Expendables 2 Videogame	Barney Ross
2012	Skylanders: Giants	Zap
2013	Skylanders: Swap Force	Zap
2014	Scooby-Doo and Looney Tunes: Cartoon Universe	Bugs Bunny Daffy Duck Foghorn Leghorn Sylvester
	Skylanders: Trap Team	Zap
2015	Skylanders: SuperChargers	Zap
2016	Skylanders: Imaginators	Zap