Jim Cummings

James Jonah Cummings (born November 3, 1952) is an American voice actor.

Born in Youngstown, Ohio, Cummings attended Immaculate Conception and St. Columba grade schools as well as Ursuline High School and graduated from there in 1970.

Upon his graduation from high school, Cummings relocated to New Orleans, where he designed and painted Mardi Gras floats, worked as a river boat deck hand, and sang and played drums in the regionally-successful rock band Fusion.

Beginning his career in the 1980s, he has appeared in almost 400 roles.

He later married and moved to Anaheim, California, where he managed a video store in the early 1980s, before launching his voice acting career in late 1984.

Cummings's first voice role was as Lionel the Lion and Aunt Fira in Dumbo's Circus.

Cummings has frequently worked with The Walt Disney Company and Warner Bros., including as the official voice of Winnie the Pooh since 1988, Tigger since 1989, the Tasmanian Devil since 1991, and Pete since 1992.

Some of Cummings' earliest vocal work was at Disney, where he replaced Sterling Holloway as the voice of Winnie the Pooh in 1988.

His impression proved to be so spot-on that he also filled in for Holloway as Kaa for both Jungle Cubs and The Jungle Book 2, and as the Cheshire Cat for various Disney video games.

He also notably impersonated J. Pat O'Malley in the roles of Colonel Hathi for both aforementioned productions and the Colonel in 101 Dalmatians: The Series, Louis Prima as King Louie in Jungle Cubs and TaleSpin, and Wayne Knight as Tantor the Elephant in The Legend of Tarzan.

Starting with Goof Troop, Cummings also became the regular voice of Pete.

Beginning with The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Cummings alternated with Paul Winchell as Tigger, before fully replacing him as the character starting with The Tigger Movie.

He had also filled in for Winchell as the voice of Zummi Gummi in the final season of Adventures of the Gummi Bears, and as Dick Dastardly in Wacky Races Forever and Wacky Races Starring Dastardly and Muttley.

Similarly, he alternated with Peter Cullen in the role of Monterey Jack in Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers.

In The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning, Cummings voiced King Triton in place of Kenneth Mars, who was unable to reprise the role due to his struggles with pancreatic cancer.

Other notable roles include Fat Cat and Monterey Jack on Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (1989–1990), the title character of Darkwing Duck (1991–1992), Kaa on Jungle Cubs (1996–1998) and The Jungle Book 2 (2003), Cat on CatDog (1998–2005), and Police Chief Gluteus on Ozzy & Drix (2002–2004).

In 1991, he was hired by Warner Bros. Animation to voice Taz on the animated series Taz-Mania and would continue to voice the character in various Looney Tunes media.

When actor Jeremy Irons, the voice of Scar in The Lion King, developed vocal problems during the recording of the song "Be Prepared", Cummings replaced him on the remainder of the track.

He also provided Scar's voice in a brief nightmare sequence in The Lion King II: Simba's Pride.

Cummings would later be hired as the singing double for both Russell Means as Chief Powhatan and Gordon Tootoosis as Kekata in Pocahontas, and the singing double for Christopher Lloyd as Grigori Rasputin in Anastasia.

He went onto understudy for Lloyd by voicing Rasputin for the Anastasia: Adventures with Pooka and Bartok video game.

From 1993 to 2006, he voiced Smokey Bear in several commercials, ads, and promos.

Besides being a voice double and sound-alike, Cummings has also voiced original characters.

In Rescue Rangers and TaleSpin, he portrayed a wide variety of other characters.

His most famous role in Rescue Rangers was the villainous Fat Cat, and for TaleSpin, he notably starred as the show’s main antagonist, Don Karnage.

After both shows concluded production, Cummings went on to portray the title characters in Darkwing Duck and Bonkers, each of which he also got to voice other characters.

He would later co-star with Tom Kenny in CatDog, with Cummings playing Cat and Kenny voicing Dog.

Also, despite having starred in animated feature films under "additional voices", Cummings achieved a motion picture breakthrough by starring in Disney's Aladdin, where he voiced both Razoul the Agrabah Guard Captain and Farouk the Merchant.

He later went on to voice original characters for a variety of the company's theatrical and direct-to-video films, such as Ed the Hyena in The Lion King and Ray the Firefly in The Princess and the Frog.

. Other villain roles Cummings notably took on include Sierra the Cearadactylus in The Land Before Time VII: The Stone of Cold Fire, and Dr. Robotnik in the Sonic the Hedgehog animated series that aired from 1993 to 1994.

He also voiced several characters in the 1997 video game Fallout, but his most notable role was the game's main antagonist, The Master.

In addition, he voiced various characters for the Scooby-Doo, Tom and Jerry, and Star Wars franchises.

His most famous role in Star Wars is Hondo Ohnaka the Weequay Pirate.

According to Cummings, Ohnaka was initially only going to appear in a two or three episode story arc of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, but the character was so well-received that he became much more recurring throughout the franchise.

Following the departure of Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, Cummings was hired to portray characters in several productions by Dreamworks, most notably voicing the Captain of Lord Farquaad's Guards in Shrek, Hernán Cortés in The Road to El Dorado along with additional characters, and Luca in Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas.

In 1998, Cummings also starred as Ocula the Gorgonite in Small Soldiers, which was a live-action film directed by Joe Dante.

Aside from Fat Cat and Don Karnage, Cummings's involvements as Pete and the Tasmanian Devil were elements that typecast him in antagonistic roles.

An example comes from when he voiced Steele the Alaskan Malamute in Universal's Balto.

According to an interview with director Simon Wells, the role was originally offered to Brendan Fraser, but executive producer Steven Spielberg recommended recasting the role with Cummings because he wanted to feel a clearer sense of Steele's "inherent evil".

Wells stated that Cummings "did a fantastic job, and totally made the character live, so I don't regret the choice."