Bugs The Bunny - Voice Actors

Voice Actors

The following are the many voice actors who have voiced Bugs Bunny over the last seventy-two years:

Mel Blanc

Mel Blanc voiced the character for 49 years, from Bugs' debut in 1940's A Wild Hare until Blanc's death in 1989. Blanc described the voice as a combination of Bronx and Brooklyn accents; however, Tex Avery claimed that he asked Blanc to give the character not a New York accent per se, but a voice like that of actor Frank McHugh, who frequently appeared in supporting roles in the 1930s and whose voice might be described as New York Irish. In Bugs' second cartoon Elmer's Pet Rabbit, Blanc created a completely new voice for Bugs, which sounded like a Jimmy Stewart impression, but the directors decided the previous voice was better. Though his best-known character was the carrot-chomping rabbit, munching on the carrots interrupted the dialogue. Various substitutes, such as celery, were tried, but none of them sounded like a carrot. So for the sake of expedience, he would munch and then spit the carrot bits into a spittoon rather than swallowing them, and continue with the dialogue. One often-repeated story, possibly originating from the 1975 documentary film Bugs Bunny: Superstar, is that Blanc was allergic to carrots and had to spit them out to minimize any allergic reaction — but his autobiography makes no such claim. In fact, in a 1984 interview with Tim Lawson, co-author of The Magic Behind The Voices: A Who's Who of Voice Actors (University Press of Mississippi, 2004), Blanc emphatically denied being allergic to carrots.

Jeff Bergman

Jeff Bergman was the first to voice Bugs (and several other Looney Tunes characters) after Mel Blanc died in 1989. He got the job by impressing Warner Bros. higher-ups with a tape of himself re-creating the voices of several of Blanc's characters, including Bugs. He had rigged the tape player so that he could use a switch to instantly toggle back and forth between the original recording of Blanc and Bergman's recording of the same lines. Upon doing this, it was almost impossible for the producers to tell which voice was Blanc's and which voice was Bergman; thus his vocal ability was established and his career launched. Bergman first voiced Bugs in the television special Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue and the first season of Tiny Toon Adventures. He also voiced Bugs in the early 1990s Looney Tunes shorts Box Office Bunny, (Blooper) Bunny and Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers. In 2011, Bergman returned to voice Bugs after an almost 20-year absence for Cartoon Network's The Looney Tunes Show. However, his voice for Bugs in The Looney Tunes Show is slightly different from when he first voiced the character.

Greg Burson

Greg Burson first voiced Bugs in later episodes of Tiny Toon Adventures. He was then given the responsibility of voicing Bugs in 1995's Carrotblanca, a well-received Looney Tunes short that served as both a parody and an homage of the film Casablanca. Burson next voiced Bugs in the 1996 short From Hare to Eternity, which was dedicated to the deceased Friz Freleng and was also the final Looney Tunes cartoon that Chuck Jones directed. Burson also voiced Bugs for various advertisements and for the intro to the Bugs 'N Daffy programming block that was shown on Cartoon Network and The WB during the late 1990s. He died in 2008.

Billy West

Billy West first voiced Bugs in the 1996 feature film Space Jam, starring alongside Michael Jordan. West has since voiced Bugs in subsequent Looney Tunes productions, including the 2006 direct-to-video feature Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas and the DVD compilations Reality Check and Stranger Than Fiction, along with several Looney Tunes-centric CDs and video games.

Joe Alaskey

Joe Alaskey first voiced Bugs in the 2000 direct-to-video feature Tweety's High-Flying Adventure, and he went on to voice the character in the 2003 feature film Looney Tunes: Back in Action. Alaskey has since voiced Bugs in subsequent Looney Tunes productions, including the shorts Daffy Duck for President (which was dedicated to the deceased Chuck Jones) and Hare and Loathing in Las Vegas, as well as several video games (concurrent with Billy West).

Samuel Vincent

Samuel Vincent served as the voice of Bugs in the Cartoon Network TV series Baby Looney Tunes.

Noel Blanc

Noel Blanc, Mel Blanc's son, voiced Bugs for the final episode of Tiny Toon Adventures, "It's a Wonderful Tiny Toon Christmas Special." The elder Blanc claimed in his later years that Noel substituted for Mel in various cartoon studios, including doing Bugs at Warner Bros., while he was recovering from a near-fatal car wreck. Noel can also be seen doing Bugs' voice with his father in the documentary on the making of the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit.