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Bill Fagerbakke

Bill Fagerbakke has built a career that moves comfortably between live-action comedy, drama and animation, helped by a presence that can feel imposing, gentle or wonderfully offbeat. Born on October 4, 1957, in Fontana, California, he moved to Rupert, Idaho, as a youth and became a three-sport athlete at Minico High School. He later played defensive line for the University of Idaho, but a knee injury ended his athletic career and redirected his attention toward theater. His first stage role came in a campus production of Godspell. That change of course eventually led to a varied screen career. Fagerbakke’s first television appearance came on Perfect Strangers in 1984, and he became especially familiar to sitcom audiences as assistant coach Michael “Dauber” Dybinski on Coach. His live-action work has also included Funny Farm, the 1994 miniseries Stephen King’s The Stand, Oz, How I Met Your Mother, Unbelievable and Young Sheldon. These roles made good use of his size and grounded delivery without trapping him in a single kind of character. His voice work has proved just as substantial. Fagerbakke played Broadway and Hollywood in Gargoyles, Alan Parish in the Jumanji television series and Kurt Blobberts in Lloyd in Space, alongside appearances in animated shows including Kim Possible, American Dad, Transformers: Animated, Batman: The Brave and the Bold and Young Justice. His defining role, however, is Patrick Star. Fagerbakke has voiced the cheerfully dim starfish since 1997, carrying the character through SpongeBob SquarePants, feature films, video games and spinoffs. Since 2021, he has led The Patrick Star Show in the same role. In 2024, he and Tom Kenny voiced Patrick and SpongeBob in real time for Nickelodeon’s alternative Super Bowl LVIII broadcast, improvising in character with motion capture. It was another unusual turn in a career shaped by adaptability: an athlete redirected toward theater who became one of television animation’s most recognizable voices.