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Billy West

Billy West has built a career around the strange magic of making one performer sound like an entire cast. Born William Richard Werstine in Detroit on April 16, 1952, he grew up in Roslindale, Boston, and New Jersey before finding his way into music, radio and eventually animation. After a semester at Berklee College of Music, West played in bands around Boston while working at a guitar shop in Harvard Square. Radio proved to be the bridge to character work. He performed daily comedy routines on WBCN’s The Big Mattress, then moved to New York in 1988 and became a regular on The Howard Stern Show, where his extensive repertoire of impressions brought him wider attention. West’s first television voice role came with the 1988 revival of Beany and Cecil. His major early animation work followed on Doug and The Ren & Stimpy Show. As Stimpy—and later Ren, along with Mr. Horse and other characters—he showed how elastic his performances could be, shifting between nervous sweetness, explosive comedy and pure cartoon noise. Futurama gave that range an even larger playground. West voices Philip J. Fry, Professor Farnsworth, Dr. Zoidberg and Zapp Brannigan, among others, meaning whole conversations can unfold between characters he performs himself. Fry sits particularly close to West’s natural voice, while Farnsworth, Zoidberg and Brannigan each occupy their own sharply drawn comic territory. West has named Fry and Stimpy as his favorite characters, both of which he originated. His film work includes Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd in Space Jam, Shaggy Rogers in Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, additional voices in Dinosaur and Muttley in Scoob! He has also carried familiar characters across television, commercials and video games, including the red M&M. Whether creating an original personality or stepping into a long-established cartoon voice, West approaches voice acting as performance rather than novelty—and his career shows just how much character can be built from sound alone.