Trivia: Was a member of the very first graduating class of the National Theatre School of Canada. First voice-over role was announcing the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1967. Has voiced the Transformers character Optimus Prime for over three decades. Based his Optimus Prime voice on his older brother, a retired Marine Corps soldier. First actor to give a voice to Nintendo's mascot Mario, on the Saturday Supercade series.

Trivia: His high school senior class voted him most likely to recede.While working on a dog food commercial, the producer's girlfriend suggested he audition for Hanna-Barbera's Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!Originally auditioned for the role of Scooby in Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!Voiced eight of the original Decepticons and two of the original Autobots on the animated series The Transformers (1984).His Doctor Claw voice is the result of an impression of singer Barry White.His voice of the Cave of Wonder in Aladdin (1992) was based on Sir Sean Connery.Has voiced most of Scooby-Doo's Fred Jones, including animated series, parodies and cameos.The first voice actor to appear in two films that made $1 billion.Was honored with an Emmy Award for lifetime achievement in 2016.

Trivia: Born Arline Golonka (she was named after 1930s film actress Arline Judge) Golonka trained as a singer and dancer from childhood and went professional in a summer-stock troupe while still in her teens. She studied at the Goodman Theatre in her native Chicago before striking out for New York, where she attended classes at the Actor's Studio and made her Broadway debut in the 1958 flop Night Circus. Her later Broadway credits include Take Me Along, Come Blow Your Horn, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; in the latter production, she played a good-natured, empty-headed hooker, a role she'd repeat with variations throughout the 1960s. Before relocating to Los Angeles in 1967 to appear in Penelope, Golonka had accumulated dozens of New York-based film credits, including the 1965 theatrical feature Harvey Middleman, Fireman (1965). Best known for her portrayal of Millie Swanson on TV's Mayberry RFD (1968-71), Arlene Golonka was also a regular on Joe and Valerie (1978-79) and has been seen in such films as Hang 'Em High (1967), The Busy Body (1968) and The In-Laws (1977).

Trivia: Made his voice acting debut in 1979 at the age of 8 in an episode of Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo.Played bass guitar in the rock band Boy Hits Car since their founding in 1993, but left in 2006.Has done brand endorsement work for Netflix, Nextel and Best Buy.Got the callback for Stretch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters a year after his audition.Has voiced characters in cartoons, anime and animation, radio, commercials, films and video games.

Trivia: Decided she wanted to work as a voice actor for cartoons at the age of 8. Was a member of The Groundlings for 10 years. Earned her first professional voice-over role in a 1979 episode of Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo. Played the role of Lucille Ball in Weird Al Yankovic's 1983 music video for "Hey, Ricky!" In 1995, was nominated for the award for Voice Acting in the Field of Animation for her role as Dot Warner in Animaniacs at the 23rd Annual Annie Awards. Nominated for the award for Voice Acting by a Female Performer in a TV Production for her role as Debbie Douglas in Mission Freakazoid at the 25th Annual Annie Awards. Provided the voice for characters in numerous video games, including Kingdom Hearts, Futurama, Epic Mickey, Fallout and The Simpsons Game. Has been the voice of many iconic television characters, including Daisy Duck, Wilma Flintstone, Babs Bunny and multiple roles in The Simpsons.

Trivia: Juvenile actress Dana Hill burst into the public's consciousness with her poignant portrayal of a molestation victim in the made-for-TV movie Fallen Angel (1981). Hill was able to play adolescents and teenagers well into her 20s, essaying meaty supporting roles in such films as Shoot the Moon (1981), Cross Creek (1983) and National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985). On TV, she was seen as Gabby, daughter of Mimi Kennedy, in The Two of Us (1981), and as Ginger in Sugar and Spice. Her on-screen work radically curtailed by chronic illness--she would succumb to diabetes at the age of 32--Dana Hill flourished as a voiceover artist, lending her distinctively throaty vocal timbre to such TV cartoon series as Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, Widget the Worldwatcher, The Goof Troop, Droopy, Master Detective, Bonkers, and Duckman.

Trivia: Diminutive (5'7") comic actor Howard Morris was in his teens when, while attending the National Youth Administration's radio workshop in New York City, he befriended another aspiring actor named Carl Reiner. The two were reunited in Honolulu during World War II, when Morris was Reiner's sergeant in an entertainment unit. Both Morris and Reiner played supporting roles in Maurice Evans' army-camp tour of Hamlet and MacBeth; after the war, the two performers toured in the musical Call Me Mister before joining the cast of Sid Caesar's TV comedy-variety series. Only after finishing nine seasons with Caesar were Morris and Reiner able to establish their own individual showbiz identities: Reiner as a novelist, film supporting actor, director and creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show, and Morris as one of the most prolific TV guest stars and directors of the 1960s. Relocating from New York to LA in 1961, Morris played the recurring role of goonish, rock-throwing Ernest T. Bass on The Andy Griffith Show, and a whole slew of one-shot assignments on series ranging from The Danny Thomas Show to The Twilight Zone. Morris forever shed the "third banana" status he'd had during his Sid Caesar days by directing episodes of such TV weeklies as Andy Griffith, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Gomer Pyle USMC, and the unforgettable black-and-white pilot for Get Smart. He also served as producer of the 1972-73 sitcom The Corner Bar. In films, Morris sparkled in such supporting parts as Jerry Lewis' browbeaten father in The Nutty Professor and German psychiatrist Dr. Lilloman in Mel Brooks' High Anxiety (1977). His theatrical-film directorial credits include the all-star comedy Who's Minding the Mint (1967), Doris Day's swan song With Six You Get Eggroll (1968), a very WASP-ish adaptation of Woody Allen's Don't Drink the Water (1969), and the Donny & Marie Osmond opus Goin' Coconuts (1978). Howard Morris is also a fixture of the animated cartoon voice-over world, supplying voices and directing recording sessions for many a Hanna-Barbera, Filmation and Walt Disney production: If you can't place the voice, think of Morris as Atom Ant, Beetle Bailey, Jughead Jones, and futuristic rock star Jet Screamer ("Eep, opp, ork, ah-ah") on The Jetsons.

Trivia: Born in Indiana, Chad Everett attended high school in Dearborn, Michigan, where he played quarterback on the school football team. During his junior year at Wayne State University, Everett landed an acting role with a Michigan repertory company, accompanying the troupe on a State Department-sponsored tour of India. He headed to Hollywood in 1960, got nowhere fast, relocated to New York, did some modelling and TV commercials, then was signed to a $250-per week contract with Warner Bros. He made his film debut in Warners' Claudelle Inglish (1961), and co-starred in the studio's 1963 TV western series The Dakotas. Everett then signed with MGM, where he was featured in such films as Made in Paris (1964) and The Singing Nun (1965). In 1969, MGM's TV division cast Everett in his signature role as Dr. Joe Gannon in Medical Center, a popular weekly which ran until 1976. After Medical Center, Everett continued appearing in theatrical and made-for-TV movies, and also starred in three weekly series: Hagen (1980, as Paul Hagen), The Rousters (1983, as Wyatt Earp III) and McKenna (1994, as Jack McKenna). Chad Everett also wrote, directed and performed in several TV commercials and industrial films, and was the author of a self-published book of romantic poetry, written for and dedicated to his wife, actress Shelby Grant. He died of lung cancer in July 2012.

Trivia: The son of an itinerant piano tuner-father and a restaurateur-mother, Richard Erdman was born in Oklahoma and grew up in Colorado. Having taken drama lessons since his early childhood, Erdman was 15 when he was brought to Hollywood by his mother to be "discovered." It wasn't until he'd held down an interim job as a sports reporter for the Los Angeles Examiner that Erdman finally appeared in his first film, Warner Bros.' Janie (1944). Rapidly outgrowing juvenile roles, Erdman played character parts in Hollywood films like Stalag 17 (1953) and in such European productions as Four Days Leave (1950) and Face of Fire (1959). In 1961, Erdman co-starred on the short-lived sitcom The Tab Hunter Show, playing Tab's millionaire-playboy buddy, Peter Fairchild III. In 1973, Erdman made his big-screen directorial debut with The Brothers O'Toole. Since that time, Richard Erdman has kept busy as a voice-over actor, offering a wide range of vocal characterizations for dozens of TV cartoon series, as well as the 1994 animated feature film The Pagemaster.

Trivia: Character actor Hal Smith (born Harold John Smith) cut his acting teeth in various touring road companies. Before serving in the Air Force during World War II, he had amassed impressive credits as a band singer, radio disc jockey, and writer. In the postwar years, he decided to try his luck in Hollywood, although holding down a real-estate job so he'd have a financial cushion between acting jobs. His first recurring TV role was on the vintage sitcom I Married Joan (1952-53). (It was a different actor who appeared in the bit role of Anne Baxter's suitor in O. Henry's Full House [1952].) He spent most of the '50s playing guest stints and providing voice-overs for cartoon characters, and was briefly Hal the Bartender, a commercial spokesman for a popular brand of beer. In 1960, he was signed for the semi-regular role of town drunk Otis Campbell on The Andy Griffith Show, essaying this hilarious (if politically incorrect) characterization with expertise, although he often insisted, "I don't think I've ever really been drunk in my whole life." Since Otis did not appear in every Griffith episode, Smith had time aplenty to free-lance, playing such film roles as a drunken Santa in Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960) and an effeminate Roman emperor in The Three Stooges Meet Hercules (1962), and supplying voices for such cartoon programs as Davey and Goliath and The Flintstones. By 1962, he was making 50,000 dollars per year, a tidy sum in those days. During the 1970s and '80s, Smith was most closely associated with Disney, replacing the late Vance "Pinto" Colvig as the voice of Goofy and providing voices for series ranging from Winnie the Pooh and Friends to Ducktales. Smith died in 1994.