Bill Farmer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bill Farmer (born 1952) is an American voice actor and comedian.
Bill is known for starring in Astro Boy (2004), House of Mouse (2001), Mickey Mouse Works (1999), Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (2006), Goof Troop (1992) and The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse (1987). He is best known for his voice acting for Goofy and Pluto, two famous Disney characters, and more recently he has also played Horace Horsecollar. Another big role he played was in the movie Space Jam (1996), where he voiced Yosemite Sam, Sylvester, and Foghorn Leghorn. He also has done several minor voices, both on TV (including The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy) and in video games, including Destroy All Humans!, Namco's Tales of Symphonia, where he voiced General Dorr, in Square's Kingdom Hearts series reprising the role of Goofy, Detective Date in the SEGA game Yakuza and Sam and others in cult classic adventure game Sam & Max Hit the Road.
Ever since he was a kid, he was enamored with cartoons. He grew up in a small town in Kansas which meant that there wasn't much to do there, so Saturday mornings were always fun with him because it was a time for cartoons. He learned he had a knack for doing voices and of all the characters he liked, he liked none of them better than Goofy. He always liked watching cartoons, never dreaming that one day he would get to actually be the voice of Goofy.
His first job, at the age of 15, involved doing voices because he had an affinity for doing voices, especially those of Western stars like John Wayne or Walter Brennan. He and his friends would sometimes go through fast food drive-thrus and order foods in his voices. In college, he went into radio and TV and then moved on to stand-up comedy as an impressionist until he moved out to Hollywood where he voiced Goofy since 1986.
During his stand-up years, he worked at a comedy club called the Comedy Corner in Dallas. Tuesday nights were open mike nights there and he had just gotten a job at an electronics store. He had just gotten out of show business and radio and he missed his audience. So he went to the club on Tuesday nights and he created his own five-minute routine. Starting on March 16, 1982, he started going to the Comedy Corner every week and started working on his routine and it became a career inside of six months. He worked at the Comedy Corner from 1982 until he moved to California in 1986.
His decision to move to California came from a commercial agent of his in Dallas and she suggested that, given his voices, he should try his luck in California and see what happens. He had just gotten married recently and he and his wife talked it over and he left her in Dallas and commuted for a year after he got an apartment. Then four months after his moving out to Hollywood, his agent asked him if he could do any Disney characters. His very first animated character audition was for Goofy. When he auditioned for the voice, he studied all the cartoons with Goofy in them, especially the ones released in the 1930s. He studied the hilarious laugh and "gawrsh". He inherited the voice of Goofy (as well as Pluto), around the same time Tony Anselmo inherited Donald Duck, and Wayne Allwine and Russi Taylor did likewise for Mickey and Minnie Mouse, respectively. They've become the flag bearers.
Bill believes that cartoon voices are not about funny voices, but rather acting. When he moved to California, he took acting classes. His mentor was the late Daws Butler, the voice behind many of the old Hanna-Barbera characters. Daws put it in Bill's mind that when doing cartoon voices, you're not merely doing a funny voice, you're an actor and the acting is premier and that you have to think like the character you're doing.
