A Quote by H. Jon Benjamin

I started doing comedy with no plan to do voice work. Voice work came as a function of doing comedy and meeting people who eventually develop shows like that. I didn't seek out from an early age to be on cartoons.
I started out in comedy gigging and scraping a living together, and eventually worked up to doing shows at the Comedy Store in London in 1979. That led on to me presenting a show in the early days of Channel 4 called 'Whatever You Want,' which had live music and sketches.
Comedy clubs were something that came to pass in the '80s, but toward the end of that, in the early '90s, people started doing comedy again in alternative spaces.
I always wanted voice over to be part of my career. Even as a child, I'd watch cartoons and know that someone was doing the voices. When I moved to L.A., my hope was that I'd do on-camera work and voice over. I've ended up doing both, but the voice over side took off in a way that I didn't expect!!
I love doing voiceover work. I started doing voiceover work when I had just dropped out of school, and the first few professional jobs I got were plays, but then I started making money doing voice-overs.
Voice actors I used to know who were starting out in comedy were guys who did a lot of voices. They were usually comedy actors who developed their comedy by doing tons of impressions and voices that were usually very funny. And I never did any of that, so that's, I guess, why I don't consider myself a voice actor.
When I was doing ensemble theater and comedy work, I felt I had some talents. But when I started doing my shows in Berkeley and found that I could be funny on my own, I was shocked.
I feel like L.A. is more of a showcase, and Chicago is a pure comedy scene where you're doing comedy for comedy. You're doing comedy actually for the audience that's there.
There's a way of doing comedy that feels true to the person doing it, that doesn't feel like clown-work or silly faces and antics, but that feels real - like you're playing a real person who has real thoughts and feelings, and it's very grounded. I started to watch all comedy through that prism.
When you're doing voice work, you're in a bubble where you just think about the story and the words. They record you on video while you're doing the voice work, so they capture how your face is moving and the gestures you make.
Early on, I started with classical voice and had that wonderful foundation. For where I wanted to go at that time, there were no teachers to teach it, so I came up with all kinds of different ways to develop the sound of my voice.
I love doing comedy. I find comedy quite hard work. Comedy's underrated, I think, by actors, you know? It's difficult to get it right and get it funny. I really enjoy doing it. I kind of wish I'd done it more. I can't complain. I've had a fair crack of the whip.
I like doing comedy, I like doing drama. Naturally I like to do, I like doing dramas, I like conflict, and when I do a comedy, you know, I've found that, like, romantic comedy is the trickiest one, because often it's neither: it's not romantic and it's not funny. So, like, I like a comedy that's biting. It's biting humor or really quirky humor.
A rap is a tweaked version of comedy, because comedy came first. People weren't spitting before they were doing comedy. Comedy has been relevant for years. It's the same art form, pretty much. Discovering that and applying it, I think that has made my stand-up better.
I did comedy shows and the only thing beating out my fights were my comedy shows. The entertainment I was providing was ridiculous. They had me doing absolutely everything and anything.
I started doing comedy when I was a teenager with Tom Kenny, who is the voice of SpongeBob. I don't want to name drop, but, I've known him since I was 6.
I think the reward for doing comedy is doing the comedy itself. You get to go to work everyday and laugh and make other people laugh and to me there's no greater reward than that.
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