Jess Harnell

Jess Harnell
Harnell in June 2011
Born	Jess Q. Harnell December 23, 1963 (1963-12-23) (age 47) Teaneck, New Jersey, U.S.
Occupation	Voice actor/singer
Years active	1988–present

Jess Q. Harnell (born December 23, 1963) is an American voice actor and singer, best known for voicing Wakko Warner on Animaniacs. Harnell has been the announcer for America's Funniest Home Videos since 1998.

Life and acting career

Harnell is originally from Teaneck, New Jersey. He started his career with minimal experience. But in 1993, he voiced his most popular roles Wakko Warner on Animaniacs, and Secret Squirrel on 2 Stupid Dogs.

From 1994 to 1996 he supplied the voice of Sewer Urchin in the animated series The Tick.

Meanwhile in 1996 he was Hunter on Road Rovers. Harnell voiced Joe Tabootie on the Nickelodeon show ChalkZone, Petrol on Firehouse Tales, Crash Bandicoot in Crash Tag Team Racing, Crash of the Titans, and Crash: Mind over Mutant, Lo-Lo in Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, Spyro the Dragon in Spyro: A Hero's Tail and Spyro: Shadow Legacy, Jerry in Totally Spies, Linguni in Pucca, and Doctor Finklestein in The Nightmare Before Christmas's video game spin-offs, as well as in the Kingdom Hearts series replacing the late William Hickey who voiced him in the film. In 2005 he voiced Buzz Blister in Tom & Jerry: Blast off to Mars.

In 2007, he replaced Neil Flynn to voice The Plumber in Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction and Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time. He also voiced the Smuggler in the Ratchet & Clank Future series. In 2001, he was the singing voice of Buster on Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure. He also voiced Captain Hero on Comedy Central's animated comedy Drawn Together and he also does the voices of Wooton Bassett, and Bennett Charles on the radio drama Adventures in Odyssey, plays the lead role of Finnian Jones for the Lamplighter Theatre Radio Drama, as well as Br'er Rabbit on the Disney TV show House of Mouse as well as in the Disney attraction, Splash Mountain (both at Disneyland and Walt Disney World). He also made a few appearances on Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad, both on-screen and in voice-over. His voice also made an appearance in NASCAR Rumble, and is credited for in-game commentary in the follow-up game Rumble Racing. Jess also replaced Brad Garrett as the voice of Fatso during season 3 of The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper.

He voiced the characters of Ironhide and Barricade in Michael Bay's Transformers, released on July 2, 2007, making him the only voice actor to play both an Autobot (Ironhide) and a Decepticon (Barricade). He returned to voice Ironhide once again in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen^[1][2][3] and Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

He also was in the short film Star Wars Cops: Troops as a Stormtrooper and in 2009, he voiced a character in the popular animated film Up, which Ratchet & Clank co-star David Kaye was also in.

Harnell's father was composer Joe Harnell. He is the uncle of Jeremy Harnell. Based in London, Jeremy (aka- JC Harnell, sonsofwolves), is an award-winning, ambient electronic-music composer and graphic designer. Winner of 2011 People's Choice Music Awards, presenter - Natalia Tena from the Harry Potter series.

Music career

As a musician, Harnell released his only solo album in 1995 called The Sound Of Your Voice. He is the lead vocalist in the Pop/Metal mashup rock band, Rock Sugar, which evolved from his previous band, Loud & Clear. With Loud & Clear/Rock Sugar, Harnell released four albums: 2003's Disc-Connected, 2007's self-titled demo album, 2008's Festival Of Fire, and 2010's Reimaginator.

References

1. ^ "Voice Cast Announced on Program at Australia Premiere". Seibertron. http://www.seibertron.com/news/view.php?id=10694. 
2. ^ "Transformers Movie Voice Cast Revealed!". TFormers.com. http://tformers.com/article.php?sid=7889. 
3. ^ ""Transformers" Movie Credits". About.com. http://movies.about.com/library/weekly/aatransformerscast.htm. 

External links

• Official website
• Jess Harnell at the Internet Movie Database

Preceded by Gary Owens

Announcer for America's Funniest Home Videos 1998–present

Succeeded by incumbent

Preceded by Tom Kenny

Voice of Spyro the Dragon 2004–2005

Succeeded by Elijah Wood

Preceded by Steven Jay Blum

Voice of Crash Bandicoot 2005–present

Succeeded by TBA

Preceded by Matt Hill

Voice of Ironhide 2007

Succeeded by Corey Burton

Preceded by Corey Burton

Voice of Ironhide 2009

Succeeded by Keith Szarabajka

Preceded by Keith Szarabajka

Voice of Ironhide 2011

Succeeded by Current

Persondata
Name	Harnell, Jess
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	December 23, 1963
Place of birth	Teaneck, New Jersey, US
Date of death
Place of death