Frank Welker
Frank Welker is an actor, born 1946.
Frank Welker started working in the 1960s and, by a 2020 count, held around 850 film, television and video game credits, which makes him one of the most prolific performers in the history of any medium. The films he has appeared in have grossed $17.4 billion. Almost nobody could pick him out of a line-up.
That is the job. Welker's speciality is the noise a creature makes, a discipline with no dialogue to hide behind: Abu the monkey in Aladdin, the dragon in Shrek, Sharptooth in The Land Before Time, the Graboids in Tremors, the Jabberwocky in Alice in Wonderland, Khan the horse in Mulan. A great deal of it is uncredited, including the lion roars in The Lion King and the cat in Big Hero 6, because a growl is not the sort of thing anyone thinks to put on a title card. He works the other end of the range too, playing Megatron and Galvatron across the Transformers films, Shao Kahn in the 1995 Mortal Kombat, and Nibbler on Futurama.
The steadiest part of the career is Scooby-Doo. He has voiced Fred Jones since the show began in 1969 and took over Scooby himself in 2002, which means one performer has been in that cast for over fifty years; when Scoob! was made in 2020 he was the only original voice left in it. Curious George, Garfield, Jabberjaw and Astro on The Jetsons all belong to him as well. If you have watched American animation at any point since the moon landing, you have heard him and not known it.
Movies (235)
- The Lion King (1994)
- Shrek (2001)
- Big Hero 6 (2014)
- Mulan (1998)
- Aladdin (1992)
- Alice in Wonderland (2010)
- Beauty and the Beast (1991)
- Mortal Kombat (1995)
- Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)
- Aladdin (2019)
- The Little Mermaid (1989)
- Shrek Forever After (2010)
- Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted (2012)
- Tarzan (1999)
- Anaconda (1997)
- The Cat in the Hat (2003)
- The Cat in the Hat (2003)
- Pocahontas (1995)
- Poltergeist (1982)
- Gremlins (1984)
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
- Stargate (1994)
- Cinderella II: Dreams Come True (2002)
- Mulan II (2004)
- The Road to El Dorado (2000)
- Deep Blue Sea (1999)
- The Lion King 1½ (2004)
- Tremors (1990)
- The Smurfs (2011)
- Scoob! (2020)
TV (162)
- The Simpsons (1989)
- Futurama (1999)
- South Park (1997)
- Robot Chicken (2005)
- Jackie Chan Adventures (2000)
- Dexter's Laboratory (1996)
- Kim Possible (2002)
- The Smurfs (1981)
- Batman: The Animated Series (1992)
- Johnny Bravo (1997)
- Garfield and Friends (1988)
- Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated (2010)
- The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2002)
- Animaniacs (1993)
- The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy (2001)
- Curious George (2006)
- Tom & Jerry Kids Show (1990)
- Superman: The Animated Series (1996)
- Looney Tunes Cartoons (2020)
- Cow and Chicken (1997)
- Lilo & Stitch: The Series (2003)
- seaQuest DSV (1993)
- What's New, Scooby-Doo? (2002)
- Bubble Guppies (2011)
- DuckTales (1987)
- Timon and Pumbaa (1995)
- The Transformers (1984)
- Gargoyles (1994)
- Marvel's Avengers (2013)
- All Hail King Julien (2014)
Where to start with Frank Welker
Gremlins first. Welker voices Stripe and the mogwai, which is to say the entire creature cast of a film whose comedy and menace both depend on how those things sound, and it is the fastest demonstration of his range in one sitting.
Then Aladdin, where Abu carries whole scenes of comic timing without a word of English, and The Land Before Time, where he supplies the only genuinely frightening element in a children's film. Tremors is worth it for how much personality he finds in an underground worm. For the speaking side, Transformers: Age of Extinction has him as Galvatron and Futurama has him as Nibbler, two performances that could hardly be further apart. Mulan and Shrek make good background listening once you know what to listen for, since the horse and the dragon are both doing acting the script never describes.
The Disney Renaissance, where the animals are all him
Abu, the carpet's sound design, the tiger, the horse, the whale. Across the whole run he is the creature department, and the performances carry real comic timing without a single word. Aladdin is the showcase and the others are steady, invisible craft.
When the creature performance is the whole film
Some films live or die on whether the thing on screen feels alive, and these are the ones where that is his job. Gremlins is the obvious case, Stargate needs an alien to read as a character, and Transformers hands him Megatron at full volume.
Welker in the modern ensembles
Eight hundred credits and still working, usually as the animal nobody thinks to credit. Big Hero 6, Shrek and Tarzan all lean on him for the non-verbal characters, and The Simpsons and Futurama keep him on the bench for anything that growls.