Jim Cummings Quotes

I can't do an accent unless I'm on the set. I forget how to do it until I'm on the set.

I've been doing this since I was 10 years old, inhabiting different people and playing different roles.

Yes, Pluton, actually, in the play. And I play him in my most stentorian voice.

To give Tinker Bell a voice for the first time in history is such an honor.

I love it and it is a blessing to be able to have seventy-five to eighty episodes to develop a character and find your voice. You have a similar through voice, and yet you are making different decisions, and so you act differently and you make different choices, as that is what your character would do.

To me the voice has always been the way to start any character. Once I find that, I'm good to go.

The fun part about doing voiceovers and all that stuff is that you're not yourself; you're some other looking thing and sounding thing and whatever else.

Character and story are suggested by the voice in the words themselves.

Voices have always been my way into a character. I usually approach the voice first.

The way a character sounds is so important to how you're going to play him.

In acting, the basic tool is observation. Whenever you see something, you store it in your head, and when you come across a character that reminds you of that instance, you incorporate it.

Giving the voice and expressions to a character is giving it a soul.

Being a screenwriter for a comedy, you're writing for characters in them in their voice. I could write anyone.

You can actually improvise a lot as a voice actor. It's not that entirely different than shooting a live action movie; the characters mouths are quite easy to manipulate once all the information is built into the computer. So you can improvise a lot and it doesn't matter really how far along they are in the process they can really just make the character say something different.

There were two things that became apparent, pretty quickly into the process. One was that the muscles didn't take as much reconditioning as I thought they would. It was more like voice acting than I thought it would be. You're using your whole body and there are things that are different, but when you are doing a character, even in the booth, nobody is watching but my face will do different things when I do different characters.

Many of my characters first came through to me as voices. That's why I use a tape recorder.

My characters all start with rhythms and sounds. Once I hear the voice and get into the rhythm, the attitude and the physicality just come out on their own.

It's dialogue that gives your cast their voices, and is crucial in defining their characters.

I did 40 voices for Chris Wedge, the director of the first film, before coming up with the version we used. He was hard to please, I don't know why. I gave him really slow talking voices. then I thought perhaps Sid could be an Indian sounding sloth. To find out more about my character, I watched footage of sloths. I discovered that the food they store in their pouches rots and ferments and half the time they're drunk.

The character of Brent Spiner. We certainly collaborate on the concept of that, but he basically writes the script, then it's sort of a combination of his voice and my voice.

I think it's essential for writers to be involved in the recording process as things can often go wrong in this area. Voice actors are all too often presented with a wad of XL sheets, no proper character notes, context or reference and are just expected to perform.

If anything, in the podcast world, I'm relieved that I don't have to dress like the character. I don't necessarily have to do all of the physicality that conveys the character, but do as much as I need to help me feel like the character.

Cassandra wondered at the mind's cruel ability to toss up flecks of the past. Why, as she neared her life's end, her grandmother's head should ring with the voices of people long since gone. Was it always this way? Did those with passage booked on death's silent ship always scan the dock for faces of the long-departed?

I think it would be just to say the most essential characteristic of mind is memory, using this word in its broadest sense to include every influence of past experience on present reactions.

I find the voice is what I look for first and foremost with just about every character I play.