Jim Cummings
Jim Cummings
James Jonah "Jim" Cummingsis an American voice actor and singer, who has appeared in almost 400 roles. He is known for voicing the title character from Darkwing Duck, Dr. Robotnik from Sonic the Hedgehog, and Pete. His other characters include Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, and the Tasmanian Devil. He has performed in numerous animated Disney and DreamWorks movies including Aladdin, The Lion King, Balto, Antz, The Road to El Dorado, Shrek, and The Princess and the Frog. He has also...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionVoice Actor
Date of Birth3 November 1952
CityYoungstown, OH
CountryUnited States of America
I take the work seriously. Which is why I always swing for the fences whenever I voice a character. But that said, I don't take myself all that seriously.
As a kid, I just loved cartoons. And as the credits went by, I'd study those names and then try to figure how I could get hired to do what Mel Blanc and Daws Butler did. Create all of these great voices for animated characters.
Darkwing Duck and Don Karnage are the most fun to do, because they're both probably the closest to me - I kinda improvise a lot of them, kinda ad lib.
I get to be one of the torch-bearers for a new generation.
John Fiedler's voice was kind of like the wind blowing through tall grass. It sounded homey and it sounded comforting.
I do very little on-camera acting, so within a phrase as a voice actor you have to know how to convey when someone is 95 years old or 19 years old. . . When I was the lead singer of the California Raisins commercials there was a traditional actor there as well and he would do all these body movements without saying anything because he was "acting." And the only acting the microphone picked up on was silence.
I have a brand new favorite for a Disney animated feature coming out next Christmas called The Princess and the Frog. I'm Ray the singing Cajun firefly. New Orleans is my second hometown. I was a deckhand on a riverboat there when I was 18, so I have that Cajun accent down pat. Ray is a lovesick firefly who's near-sighted and falls in love with the Evening Star. Of course, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger will always be favorites of mine too.
I have four daughters, with the two youngest being four years old and a year and a half. When one of my older daughters was in sixth grade, a classmate brought in their talking Winnie the Pooh doll for show and tell, so the next week my daughter one upped her classmates and brought me to school in for show and tell.
I have some calls out to Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Eddie Murphy. I said, 'I won't star in any blockbuster films if you stay out of animated films.' They just won't call me back.
Sometimes I'll have a brief window of mini-fame thanks to 'Access Hollywood.' But it only lasts a couple of days, and then no one recognizes me anymore.
Everybody can identify with somebody in the Hundred Acre Wood.