Jeff Bergman

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, Pepé 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.