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Donald Fullilove

Donald Fullilove has built a screen career that moves easily between live-action comedy and animated voice work. Born in Dallas on May 16, 1958, he began acting young, taking his first role at 13 as the voice of Michael Jackson in the ABC Saturday-morning animated series Jackson 5ive. He continued in animation with roles as Randy in Kid Power and Jason Phillips in Emergency +4, establishing voice acting as an important thread throughout his career. After graduating from Crenshaw High School in Los Angeles in 1976, Fullilove appeared as Smash in Scared Straight! in 1980. His best-known live-action role arrived five years later in Back to the Future, where he played Goldie Wilson, the ambitious Hill Valley employee who would become the town’s mayor. Fullilove returned in Back to the Future Part II as Goldie Wilson III, the mayor’s hovermobile-salesman grandson—a playful extension of the Wilson family across the series’ shifting timeline. In October 2024, he revisited that world with a Broadway cameo in Back to the Future: The Musical, appearing as the elder Wilson’s father. Fullilove’s later work continued to balance voice performance with appearances tied to widely seen animated productions. He portrayed a train foreman in Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, voiced Nurse George in Pixar’s Up and played Chuck E. in Partysaurus Rex. Beginning in 2009, he also took on the recurring role of Reginald the Koala in American Dad! That range gives Fullilove’s career its shape: early Saturday-morning animation, a memorable pair of roles in time-travel comedy, and a steady return to distinctive animated characters. Whether playing a future mayor or giving voice to a koala, he brings personality to parts designed to make an impression quickly.