Frank Oz
Frank Oz
Frank Ozis an English-born American filmmaker, puppeteer, and actor. His career began as a puppeteer, where he performed the Muppet characters of Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear in The Muppet Show, and Cookie Monster, Bert, and Grover in Sesame Street. He is also known for being the puppeteer and voice of Yoda in the Star Wars films...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPuppeteer
Date of Birth25 May 1944
CityHereford, England
CountryUnited States of America
I wouldn't like to be that famous, I value my privacy. Mind you, Miss Piggy enjoys every moment of it. If it were not for me, she would spend all her time in the limelight.
Piggy is certainly hard, but that's just part of the job. I don't even think about it. She's also hard because I have to reach down into the feminine part of myself and bring that up. It's not just the surface with her. There are a lot of neuroses in her. So I have to come from a different place with Piggy.
Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is.
There's a few movies I wanted to do, and I didn't get to do them partly because they wanted me to be part of the horse and pony show, getting the money, and I'm just not doing that. There's a few movies that people wanted me to do, but they were too safe.
'The Stepford Wives' was too big, and it was unsatisfying to do. Not that it was unsatisfying to do, but it was unsatisfying as a result because, as much as I loved parts of it, and I'm really proud of so much of it, the entire movie wasn't what I wanted it to be. It's my own fault; I didn't follow my instincts.
The power of the 'Muppets,' and the popularity of these characters, is so iconic in people's lives that I had to distance myself from publicly. Not privately... Privately, hell, I'm with them for life, and I love these people. They're my second family.
Oakland Technical High School. Like any high-school experience, it was ambiguous. I was shy with girls; I had friends, but there were times I didn't feel I had the right friends. My grades were only so-so.
I'm not politically committed at all in the popular sense; that is, to any party. I'm committed to whatever's best for the normal working person. I'm not a great fan of politics.
I never wanted to be a puppeteer. I stopped puppeteering when I was about 18. I puppeteered when I was eleven years old to 18 to make extra money to go to Europe, which I made half of and my parents gave me half.
I bought a tape recorder and some stuff and went to Europe for three months when I was 18. The puppeteering was only there as a hobby. I wanted to be a journalist. When I was 19, and after I had spent about a year in college, Jim Henson asked me to come out and try puppeteering for awhile.
I'm not an art director; I'm just not. I've always been somebody who has a sensibility that I hope is the same sensibility of others.
I've rewritten a lot of the scripts I've done. 'Little Shop Of Horrors' was a complete rewrite, but I didn't touch the dialogue. Essentially, I'm a very good editor.
What I remember most about the 'Road' movies is my enjoyment at watching the two characters sparring with each other. But more important than that was my feeling that Hope and Crosby were enjoying the sparring, too.
I was born in Hereford, England, in 1944. We moved when they had an opportunity to get a visa, about 1950. My dad always thought Europe was a bit too small for him. He wanted to see the United States... The typical immigrant story. He wanted a better life for his children, too. He always tried to get the visa, and it didn't come up.