Tom Kenny
Tom Kenny
Voice of SpongeBob SquarePants
Tom Kenny does voice work for cartoons, video games, and commercials. His most famous vocal creation is SpongeBob Squarepants.
Tom grew up in East Syracuse, New York, and became obsessed with comic books and cartoons at a young age. He searched out information on animation wherever he could find it. He says he never tried to imitate characters as a kid, but loved creating voices of his own. When he read books to his younger siblings, he often created different voices for each character.
He started his career in entertainment as a stand-up comedian, first in Boston and then in San Francisco. From his stand-up work he landed live-action gigs in film. His first big role was as Binky the Clown in the 1992 cult flick, Shakes the Clown. Throughout the 1990s, he made the rounds on various sketch shows including Fox’s The Edge and HBO’s Mr. Show with Bob and David (where he met his future wife, Jill Talley), as well as late night talk shows like Conan O’Brien and Late Night With David Letterman. For one year, he was the host of NBC's Friday Night Videos.
Various permutations of Kenny's cartoon voices can be heard on Batman (as The Penguin), CatDog, Cow & Chicken (as Duck Duck Chicken), Dave the Barbarian, Dexter's Laboratory, Dilbert (as Ratbert), Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights, The Fairly OddParents, Futurama, Mission Hill, The Mummy, Peter Cottontail, The Powerpuff Girls (as the Mayor and narrator), Rocko's Modern Life, Stripperella, The Super Hero Squad Show (Iron Man), Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends (Eduardo) and Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Nute Gunray).
He voiced "Tweety Bird" for Looney Tunes video games, and did further voice work for the "Spyro" video games. He has also done voiceovers in myriad commercials, hawking everything from Home Depot to Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.
But Kenny will probably be most remembered as the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants. He says, "It's a SpongeBob world. The success of the show is bizarre and shocking. It only sinks in at certain times. SpongeBob has been part of my life since 1997 when creator Stephen Hillenburg first showed me drawings of the character. It's fun to play a character that's so positive and so nice. I think a little bit of that rubs off on me. He has qualities I'd like to have in my real life."
Tom Kenny at the Internet Movie Database